Wednesday 17 December 2008

NSX SPORTS CAR ABORTED AT THIRD TRIMESTER



Honda is truly on a cost-cutting mission. Possibly the most conservative of the already-conservative three Japanese giant carmakers, Honda today reported a first half year operating loss for the first time in 11 years, this after pulling out of Formula One. Then CEO Takeo Fukui said that the NSX supercar has been cancelled indefinitely. NSX would have marked the return of Honda to the realm of rear-wheel-drive sports cars where the previous generation NSX was a king similarly to Nissan’s GT-R.


The company is now focusing on building environmentally sustainable cars, which means heavy battery packs, hybrid power and no V10 engines. This was the configuration of the NSX, a 5.0-litre odd V10 with over 370kW. Development had been as far as track testing for the car, and it was to be launched within the next few months. Now it’s on ice and we don’t know if it will thaw out anytime soon.

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