6 Things That Bug Me About The Honda NSX

1. The ugly key holes

The NSX is a pretty car, but its aesthetic is slightly tarnished by a few small details. For instance, the designers went to the trouble of semi-hiding the door handle, but left behind this ugly keyhole. It sticks out like a sore thumb on the NSX’s beautifully sculpted door, so why isn’t the plastic surround at least body coloured, or given a nicer design?

2. The ugly side repeaters

Another detail that spoils the NSX’s exterior is these hideous side repeaters. These parts bin specials look like they’ve been pinched from an old Honda Civic. In fact, I’m fairly certain they are actually the same parts.

3. The slow steering

This mid-engined Honda is quite simply one of the best drivers’ cars I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It’s so close to driving perfection, but there’s one detail that gets in the way: the steering is just too slow. I’m sure you’d get used to it in time, but the amount you have to turn the wheel when you’re driving hard just doesn’t seem right in a car like this.

4. The sweaty leather steering wheel

While we’re on the subject of the steering, the wheel itself irks me. Partly because it looks like something off an old Accord, but also because the leather it’s trimmed with makes your hands irritatingly clammy. Honda has made the same mistake with the equally sweaty wheel in the new Civic Type R.

5. It was in production for too long

When the NSX arrived in 1990, it was intended to rival the Ferrari 348. And it did a very good job of that: performance was similar with 276bhp compared to the Ferrari’s 300bhp (and Honda’s official power figure is widely understood to be a very conservative one), plus the Honda was more reliable, more practical and - according to road testers at the time - better to drive, .

But then Ferrari brought out the 355. Then the 360. And then the F430. What did Honda do in that time? It continued building the NSX, largely unchanged from the original, save for a mid-life facelift. By the time NSX production ended in 2005 (yep, it really was built for 15 years), it wasn’t really a Ferrari rival any more. Being a new design, the F430 was a considerably more advanced machine with a power output knocking on the door of 500bhp.

The relatively modest power output is what makes the NSX so approachable and well-suited for the road, but for supercar buyers, numbers are important. So it’s no wonder that the NSX sold poorly in the UK towards the end of its life, particularly when it had an interior that was almost exactly the same as the cars that left the factory 15 years previous.

It’s also a shame it’s taken Honda 10 (and a bit) years to replace the damn thing; in an ideal world, we’d be on the third or fourth-generation NSX by now.

Despite these misgivings, I love the NSX. It gets under your skin in a way few other cars can, with its brilliant chassis and sublime, high-revving V6 engine. Everyone who drove the NSX when it was at CT Towers fell for it hard. And the issue with that is the final thing that bugs me about the car: I might never be able to afford one.

The cheapest examples in the UK typically go for £30,000, and late facelift models with low mileage - like the one Honda lent us - go for as much as £60,000 or more. In fact, I even saw one up for an (admittedly slightly ambitious) price of £100,000. Those prices seem to be on the rise, too, putting the dreams of me and other NSX-loving petrolheads even further out of reach. Boo.

Want more NSX goodness? Check out our video review above, plus our technical rundown and full written review.