Ayrton Senna's 1991 Honda NSX Is Up for Grabs With Only 62,900 KM on the Clock

Given his links to the Japanese manufacturer and the Woking-based team, it should come as no surprise that Brazil's most famous racing driver was awarded a first-gen NSX. First registered in 1991 in Portugal, the superb-looking machine originally sported a pair of license plates reading SX-25-59.

It's not clear what happened to the car following Ayrton's death at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, but we do know that Robert McFagan became the second owner in 2013. He purchased the midship during a trip to the Algarve, which is the southernmost region of Portugal. Coincidentally, the racing driver's European home was a luxurious villa in the Algarve's Quinta Do Lago resort area.

Said villa was the home of the NSX from 1991 through 2013. Since then, it has sat at the second owner's estate in East Sussex. Featured in the 1992 documentary Ayrton Senna: Racing Is in My Blood, the NSX was transported to the Imola circuit in 2019 for the 25th anniversary of Senna's passing.

The racing driver owned two more NSXs, with both of them specified in black. Listed on sale by Auto Trader UK with 39,100 miles on the clock despite said odometer being in kilometers (62,900 and change), this amazing vehicle can be yours if you have 500,000 pounds sterling to spare. At current exchange rates, make that €581,590 or $622,485.

A helluva lot of money for a 23-year-old vehicle with less power than a modern hot hatchback, but as it happens, not all NSXs are created equal. Auto Trader UK lists 271 horsepower and 209 pound-feet of torque for the 3.0-liter mill, although the correct horsepower figure is 270 mechanical ponies. If you know your NSXs well, said numbers are for the Euro-spec manual. The four-speed automatic makes do with 252 horsepower, and being a torque-converter automatic, it's understandably slower to 60 mph (97 kph) than the five-speed stick shift.

Sold under the Acura brand in the United States, where the 1991 model was advertised with a top speed of "approximately" 165 miles per hour (266 kilometers per hour) and zero to 60 in "under" 6.0 seconds, the NSX wasn't the most powerful or fastest production car of that era. Be that as it may, bear in mind that Honda's first-generation NSX was fine-tuned by the one and only Ayrton Senna.

Senna famously criticized a prototype's rigidity during final development testing, which resulted in a production-spec NSX with a 50 percent stiffer chassis in exchange. Senna also helped refine the suspension tuning for much superior handling.

We also have to remember that Honda developed a lightweight aluminum monocoque as opposed to a pressed steel monocoque for the Ferrari 348. The Prancing Horse would level up its V8-powered line of midship sports cars to an aluminum chassis in 1999 with the five-valve-per-cylinder 360 series. Otherwise put, almost a decade after the NSX started rolling off the assembly line in Tochigi.