Autobild put together a slideshow forecasting various convertibles due to arrive from 2018 to 2023. The long-prophesied
Acura NSX roadster graced the first slide, reportedly prepped for market launch later this year at a price of 200,000 euros. That’s about 13,000 euros more spendy than the hardtop, a relative bargain. Don’t call your Goldman private banker yet, though — that
Autobild slide is likely as close as any of us will get to said roadster this year.
We’ve been doing the hokey pokey with the droptop NSX for at least six years now. In 2012 an eager enthusiast corps
thought a European patent might have revealed the convertible supercar, only to realize it was
Acura protecting
Tony Stark’s screen gem in The Avengers (pictured). In 2016,
Autocar reported that
Honda viewed the NSX as a platform for experiment and tests of developing technology that “help [
Honda] understand where the brand is going.” Those brand explorations meant Honda was “contemplating convertible, lightweight, non-hybrid and all-electric versions.”
In 2017, Internet snoopers happened on
patent images for a droptop coupe first dubbed the “Baby NSX,”
then potentially the ZSX after more snooping dug up a trademarked name. Even though production
plans for a “Small NSX” actually did exist, dated to before 2008, the Small NSX/BabyNSX/ZSX turned out to be the
Honda Sports Vision GranTurismo entry when Honda couldn’t make a business case for the genuine article.
Here we are staring down the same wishing well. Last year Acura sold 137 NSXs in the U.S. through the end of Q1, and so far this year only 67 coupes found buyers in that time. We know the NSX is a halo car, but halos work to best effect when they’re visible. So all we know now is that the talented hybrid would do well with any variant that would get it more visibility, of the top-down kind, the Type R kind, perhaps a road-legal,
non-hybrid GT3 kind, or any other.
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