What the Honda NSX can learn from a weekend of motorsport

The Goodwood Festival of Speed isn’t the only major motorsport hill climb event starring a Honda NSX or two this weekend.

A trio of Honda NSXs will be heading into the clouds of Colorado at the annual Pikes Peak hill climb, its 12.4-mile course running to 4300-metres into the sky.

Their progress is being keenly watched by NSX project manager Ted Klaus, who I caught up with at Goodwood.

They are no normal NSXs. Well, one is, but the other two are concept versions: one is all-electric with four independently controlled motors, and the other is a stripped-out version of the regular production hybrid NSX.

Klaus, somewhat of a hill climb expert himself due to regular competition in them with his father, hinted that Honda was closely tracking the progress of both cars as it decides how to evolve the NSX.

Though the NSX will be evolved; the new coupé version is just the start - Klaus refers to it as a “platform” and points to the significant investment of a new factory to build the car and the need to fill it with different versions.

Of the lightweight version, he said it was “the general direction we wish to go” with the NSX, although not in as crude a way as the Pikes Peak car, which has been gutted in a way that wouldn’t be production friendly.

As for the electric version, he pointed to the sophistication of the fact all four electric motors are independently controlled and the fundamental thing they're looking to learn is about torque vectoring. The system is a development of the one used on a CR-Z prototype at Pikes Peak last year.

While the Pikes Peak car will develop torque vectoring technology, Honda will also use it to test battery durability and power electronics, which are two other things standing between the car and production. “There are other technical issues to solve, but that’s why we have one there,” he said.

Maybe we’ll see it at Goodwood next year, but, for now, we welcome the new NSX to our shores for the first time over the weekend, as well as a healthy dollop of heritage models.

Mark Tisshaw

Title: Editor

Mark is a journalist with more than a decade of top-level experience in the automotive industry. He first joined Autocar in 2009, having previously worked in local newspapers. He has held several roles at Autocar, including news editor, deputy editor, digital editor and his current position of editor, one he has held since 2017.

From this position he oversees all of Autocar’s content across the print magazine, autocar.co.uk website, social media, video, and podcast channels, as well as our recent launch, Autocar Business. Mark regularly interviews the very top global executives in the automotive industry, telling their stories and holding them to account, meeting them at shows and events around the world.

Mark is a Car of the Year juror, a prestigious annual award that Autocar is one of the main sponsors of. He has made media appearances on the likes of the BBC, and contributed to titles including What Car?, Move Electric and Pistonheads, and has written a column for The Sun.

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