So far, the Acura NSX has failed to live up to its predecessor's reputation, but not because it's a bad car - make that supercar, actually. You can blame it on the market and how blasé we've become toward anything that doesn't produce a sonic boom.
Because the Acura (or Honda, if you prefer) NSX is a great little car (listen to us calling the NSX little...). It doesn't have the grunt power of a multi-turbo V8 supercar or the sheer track ability of a Porsche 911 Turbo, but it has that surgical instrument precision typical of Japanese sports cars.
With 573 hp obtained from no fewer than four propulsion units - one is the twin-turbo V6 mentioned earlier, and the other are electric motors, two of which power the front wheels - the Acura NSX isn't short on power. Especially if you consider it only weighs 1,230 kg (2,712 lb).
But high power and low weight can be a killer combination at high speeds if the aerodynamics aren't done right. And this video is here to show you just how much work was put into the body of the 2017 Acura NSX.
YouTube channel Engineering Explained does a great job once again of presenting complicated matters in a way that everyone can understand. The fact that they manage to make it enjoyable as well is just a bonus.
If you don't like the looks of the Acura, blame it on the air. No, really, the exterior of the car is one of those function over form cases where first of all it needs to work, and then the designers can worry about making it beautiful.
In other words, the "designer" took the form of "thousands of hours and hundreds of tests" inside a wind tunnel. Acura didn't reinvent the wheel here as other manufacturers do the same thing with their cars, but this clip explains everything so well you'd be excused if you forgot that.
With a bit of red smoke and some flow visualization paint, we get a much more visible representation of what exactly is going on on the surface of the car as the vehicle goes forward and pushes the air to the sides.
As a credit to how exciting the Acura is, it was fun seeing the host (Jason Fenske) barely maintaining a straight face as he got into the NSX and drove around the circuit. Him struggling not to grin was actually better than if he did.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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