Acura NSX

I’d been working just a week or so with veteran car designer Tom Kellogg (known for his design work on the Avanti, AVX and other specialty cars) when he encouraged me to come to his studio to review our next project. When I arrived, I was surprised to see a gleaming red Acura NSX in his driveway. Tom was beaming. “Let’s go for a ride.” It was nothing short of a revelation. Then he let me drive. We spent the rest of that morning marveling at the car, the precision sculpturing, the finish and the detailing. Though a Japanese exotic sports car was something of an oddity in the early ’90s, it was clear the playing field had changed. Honda had thrown down the gauntlet.

When Acura first launched its tour de force of technical sophistication and manufacturing, the NSX instantly established Acura as a premier brand. Only four years had lapsed since the Acura name emerged from the confines of Honda as a premier division, but sports car perceptions were about to be changed forever.