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| Image courtesy of Acura.com |
Honda has lost its soul.
As a long-time owner of Honda and Acura vehicles, it brings me no pleasure to have to point this out, but as an enthusiast, I feel it is my duty to do just that. Nothing that either brand has introduced of late inspires much enthusiasm and the upcoming 2015 NSX has yet to hit dealerships, so I am not counting that chicken until it hatches. After all, we all saw what happened with the vaporware that was the last supposed NSX successor. In fact, the rest of the automotive market does not seem the least worried by the 2015 Acura NSX, prompting Audi to start a Twitter war with Acura and calling the 2015 NSX vaporware just like its V10 powered predecessor. And even if it does materialize, that still only leaves a single car with any serious performance profile in the entire line-up, which is nothing to be proud of.
Looking back through Honda's history, there have almost always been a number of more performance oriented models in their line-up, either in the form of nearly race-spec versions of conventional models, a la the Integra Type-R, or dedicated models such as the S2000 and Honda Prelude. Light weight, sharp handling, and an engaging driving experience were characteristics that spread to all models and the company's racing lineage shone through in the continued use of double-wishbone suspensions front and rear to provide chassis dynamics that were exceptional. However, as the years went on, the Prelude and all Type-R models disappeared from the American market, the Integra was replaced with a strut suspension based RSX, and both the S2000 and NSX were allowed to fade away without successors. Now, we are left with only a very mediocre Civic Si to carry on the Honda performance car banner in North America, with the rest of the global market having absolutely nothing performance oriented coming out of Honda's factories.
