Greatest Supercar Fail: 1995 Acura NSX's First Wash in Years Ends With Donuts in the Snow

Hello, barn find/yard find/classic car/old car enthusiasts! This is a Honda/Acura NSX that sat abandoned for a number of years and is now getting a well-deserved cosmetic treatment before it undergoes its equally-earned restoration. At the time of filming, this magnificent piece of Japanese carmaking study in excellence was located in Traverse City, Michigan.

In a backyard, to be specific, at the mercy of elements and pests. But Honda hasn’t built its reputation by making biodegradable automobiles that rot away after a few years of ownership and turn into rust buckets over decades. The NSX is made of aluminum – it was the world’s first all-aluminum monocoque automobile at the time of its launch. Rust-proofing goal achieved 107%.

The corrosion-ignoring material ended up being used on the body, suspension, and engine, which is why this particular example is spotless. Well, maybe that’s not exactly the best word to describe it, but you get the picture. The car’s essential parts are intact, and only minor dirt issues make it worthy of a deep clean.

The detailer errant gang from WD Detailing is going nomad now, and the NSX is the first project they plan on doing while on the move. Instead of taking a car back to their shop and working on it, they take the mountain to Muhammad and roam about, detailing cars where they find them.

This time, they return to the scene of a previous ‘salvage crime,’ as this NSX is no incidental find but belongs to the same car nut who also owns the bagged Audi R8 we featured a few weeks ago. With a helping hand from a local detailer, the Acura gets a proper cosmetic transformation. Watch the two videos below for the oddly satisfying revival.

Unlike the German supercar, which poised a severe challenge to the detailers, the NSX behaves just as expected from a nearly three-decade-old Honda supercar. It fires right up and drives into the trailer without any hiccups – although there’s an annoying weaning noise coming from somewhere (nothing serious enough to put it back to sleep, though). The detailers say this is a 1995 model, but the owner believes it has a 3.2-liter V6 in it, and that’s a bit of a headscratcher.

The NSX was launched with a revolutionary VTEC three-liter V6 when it hit the market in 1991, and the powerplant’s single major update was performed in 1997 when the slightly bigger engine was fitted behind the cockpit. So, either this has had its engine swapped at some point, or the owner – who bought it sight unseen, by the way – is not entirely up to speed with the specs on this project.

Not that it would make much difference since the NSX is one of the coolest cars ever made (I’m talking about the first generation model, assembled between 1991 and 2005), even though it spectacularly failed to attract buyers. Over its entire production run period, the original NSX moved about 18,000 units – mainly because it was so boringly impeccable to drive, own, or maintain - anything Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, or anyone else didn't offer.

With hardly anything going wrong in the mechanical department and daily-drive-like comfort and economy (25 mpg on the highway isn’t exactly your typical supercar figure), the NSX development team omitted to implant the car with the critical ingredient: madness. The car was flawless in every single aspect one could possibly think of. 5.8 seconds from zero to sixty (97 kph) and a top speed of 165 mph (266 kph) from the dual-overhead-cam, 4-valve-per-cylinder V6.

The variable-valve-timing powerplant roared out 270 hp (273 PS) at 7,100 RPM (when linked to the five-speed manual transaxle) and 252 hp (255 PS) at 6,600 RPM if mated to the four-speed automatic transmission. The torque rating stood at 210 Ib-ft / 285 Nm at 5,300 RPM for both boxes, but the three-pedal fun one redlined at 8,000 RPM, while the automatic could only stretch its legs to a maximum of 7,500 revs..

It offered unprecedented visibility (312 degrees, thanks to a cockpit inspired by the F-16 fighter jet), atomic clock precision in cornering, superb braking (four-channel ABS for the four ventilated discs), ice-cold air-conditioning, a five-speed manual transmission, rear-wheel-drive, and a Targa top (introduced in 1995).

In other words – a splendid boredom on wheels (from a supercar’s standpoint). It wasn’t frightening to drive – mainly because it was computer-designed and Formula-One-pilots-tested. Japan’s first-ever F1 racing driver, Satoru Nakajima, took it around the Nürburgring lap after lap, constantly providing feedback to engineers, until the car’s rigidity increased by 50%.

Also, one of Honda’s speed demigods took the car for a spin, and his input was duly translated into major improvements. That someone happened to be none other than Ayrton Senna, the three-time F1 World Champion who brought McLaren three constructors' titles (1988, 1990, and 1991).

The Brazilian legend spent a day at Suzuka thrashing the car around the circuit before advising the Honda engineers that the chassis needed strengthening. After this initial assessment, Nakajima was tasked with putting the NSX through hell at the Nürburgring. It then took a supercomputer and several months of painstaking track trials to get the car to behave as Senna foretold after only a few laps behind its wheel.

The NSX had everything and then some to make any other competitors look under the bed, in the closet, and behind the door every night before sleep. And yet, the magnificent supercar from Honda was a sales flop precisely because it was beyond any fault. Look at this example featured below – 150,000 miles (241,000 kilometers) and going as strong as if it just rolled off the line.

It takes a simple detailing job to make it perfect once more. Well, almost perfect, as the owner - whom we might describe as a compulsive project car hoarder - eagerly takes the shiny car out of the shop and burns some donuts in the snow-covered gravel.