cars: Honda sports car

Sunday, 8 July 2012

Honda sports car

After Honda decided to pursue the project its management informed its engineers that the new car would have to be as fast as anything coming from Italy andGermany. The HP-X concept car evolved into the NS-X (New Sportscar eXperimental) prototype. The NS-X prototype and eventual production car were designed by a team led by Chief Designer Nicholas Zander and Executive Chief Engineer Shigeru Uehara, who subsequently would be placed in charge of the S2000project. The original performance target for the NS-X was the Ferrari 328, which was revised to the 348 as the design neared completion. Honda intended the NS-X to meet or exceed the performance of the Ferrari, while offering targeted reliability and a lower price point. For this reason, the 2.0L V6 of the HP-X was abandoned and replaced with a more powerful 3.0L VTEC V6 engine. The bodywork design had been specifically researched by Ken Okuyama and Uehara after studying the 360 degree visibility inside an F-16 fighter jet cockpit. The NS-X was designed to showcase several Honda automotive technologies, many derived from its F1 motor-sports program