Acura charts a new course with NSX supercar

THERMAL, California — With a full-throated roar, the supercar that Honda hopes will breathe new life into its Acura luxury brand is finally ready.

The next generation of the sexy NSX supercar was recently shown to reporters at a raceway here and heads to its first customers into the spring. While the NSX, with a starting price of $156,000, will certainly be out of financial reach of most drivers, company officials hope it can cast a speedy aura over the whole Acura brand.

NSX “is exactly the representation of what we’re trying to do”, says Acura’s US brand chief, Jon Ikeda. “We need to create an overall experience that’s as exciting as this car.”

That could help Acura, which is often viewed as a premium brand, reach an even loftier image goal: To be perceived as higher-end luxury vehicles.

“I think they are frustrated that they haven’t been able to move into that top tier,” says George Peterson, president of automotive marketing research firm AutoPacific. Currently, that luxury space occupied by the likes of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Lexus.

A boost in prestige could also bolster revenue. Acura started off 2016 with sales that pretty much matched where it stood last year — in the middle of the pack among major luxury car brands. Acura’s sales fell 7.8 per cent during the first two months of the year, Autodata says, while those for swanky Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes-Benz increased. BMW, was worse with an 8.2 per cent drop.

Now the focus is on showing that Acura isn’t just about luxury, but performance. That’s where NSX plays a role. The new NSX represents the latest in technology, both with a hybrid system that uses electric motors with a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V-6 engine and a “torque vectoring” system that directs more torque, or power, to wheels where it is needed on turns.

Plus, it looks like its right off the starting line of major European auto race. It will compete against other high-end sports cars like Porsche’s 911 Turbo and BMW’s i8. Aimed at moving emotions, Acura isn’t holding back in promoting NSX.

The supercar’s image was pushed forward with a dramatic Super Bowl TV commercial in which the new NSX is seen arising from pits of molten metal and shaped by machines over the raw screeches of David Lee Roth in Van Halen’s Runnin with the Devil. The message: Acura is putting an emphasis on quality and engineering prowess — “precision crafted performance”.

The message is aimed, too, at recalling the brand’s roots.

When Acura, along with Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti, came to the US in the mid-1980s, it quickly discovered a market for alternatives to Detroit’s dinosaurs, models like the Cadillac Coupe de Ville or Chrysler Imperial, and the sometimes questionable workmanship that came with them. Japanese makers paid attention to details that Detroit’s Big 3 overlooked, such as how closely body panels fit together. Acura’s car models, like Integra and Legend, quickly gained reputations for reliability.

As if that wasn’t enough, Acura shocked the auto world by showing its own supercar in 1989, the original NSX. The goal was to create a finely tuned performance car that didn’t have the maintenance and reliability issues common to Italy’s finest supercars. It was an immediate hit.

Gradually, since then, Acura moved away from performance and put a greater emphasis on sedans and SUVs over the years, the core products that customers actually buy but not the ones that burnish a performance orientation.

Though the brand was formed around the same idea, it has “wandered around a little bit” over years, Ikeda acknowledges.