Not too long ago, Honda was planning a revival of the NSX, apparently called the Acura Sports. Then they axed it. Then they announced it wasn’t dead yet. And they announced that it was dead. And now it’s alive. Well, sort of.
It has been confirmed that Honda will be entering an NSX based race car in Japan’s Super GT series, called the HSV 010. Now, technically the car has to be a production car. Honda has found a loophole to allow them to enter their car though. The Super GT rules say that a vehicle’s specs and design must be submitted to JAF to be approved. So the car has to be ready for production, not actually in production.
The car will only carry the body of the NSX. Underneath, it will be quite a different car. Instead of the planned 5.0L V10 for the production car, the race car will use a 3.4L V8 to meet Super GT requirements. It will be sourced from Japan’s Formula Nippon racing series. The engine revs up to 10,300rpm and is good for over 600bhp. It will have to be reworked for endurance spec though, as Super GT races are longer and harder than Formula Nippon, and the engine has to last four races according to rules. To meet regulations of Super GT’s GT500 class, the car will be air-restricted to 500bhp, but will lose the rev limiter. The road car’s Super Handling 4WD system would be swapped for a simple RWD layout, also to meet Super GT regulations.
Honda will be unveiling the HSV 010 as a brand new car in Japan, sometime before the end of January. While it’ll be nice to see it race, I still wish Honda would put it on sale as a road car.