Background
To put it mildly, 1989 was a difficult year for European car manufacturers.
Almost simultaneously, two seismic events had shaken the increasingly complacent, smug and, quite possibly, lazy old guard of European car production until their teeth rattled.
Toyota had slapped Mercedes-Benz firmly across the cheek with the unveiling of the Lexus LS400 and shown the world that the new champions of over-engineering and build quality were not German but Japanese.
And the announcement of Mazda’s pure and joyful MX-5 had caused chaps called Brian and Geoff to spit out their tea at the revelation that Britain’s nostalgic claim to supremacy in the popular sports car market had finally gone the way of Austin-Healey, Triumph and the still alive but badly limping MG.
The biggest shocks of all, though, would be felt in Modena and Zuffenhausen where, respectively, Ferrari and Porsche were churning out the 348 and the 964 – two cars which are near the bottom of everyone’s list of the greatest models from those two legendary marques.
The 348 was sloppy, handled and steered unimpressively and, even by Ferrari standards, was something of a prima donna.
The 964 was described by former Porsche R&D top dog Ulrich Bez as the worst 911 ever made.
Into this rather bland bowl of supercar mediocrity splashed the news of Honda’s forthcoming NSX – a car that had been tweaked and fettled to perfection by none other than Ayrton Senna and arrived with 400 patents affixed to the technological advances under its aluminium skin.
It was balanced, responsive, fast, light, nimble and agile. All rather unexpected qualities considering it hailed from the same design and manufacturing stable as the worthy but duller-than-dull Accord and Civic.
It was also superbly built, practical, useable, relatively affordable and didn’t need to have its belts changed every three months.
It was, in short, a game-changing car and one that influenced every supercar that followed in its wake - not least the McLaren F1.
Indeed, the revered designer of the F1, Gordon Murray, admired the NSX so much that he bought one, racking up over 75,000 kilometres in his and using the car as design and engineering inspiration for the similarly game-changing McLaren.
“The moment I drove the ‘little’ NSX, all the benchmark cars – Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini - I had been using as references in the development of my car vanished from my mind,” said Murray. “Of course, the car we would create, the McLaren F1, needed to be faster than the NSX, but the NSX’s ride quality and handling would become our new design target.”
High praise indeed.
