Hollis Johnson
Oh. My.
Let's cut right to the chase.I was never a fan of the first-generation Acura NSX. In fact, I could rightly be called a critic of the car, introduced in 1990 and produced until 2005. I thought it was boring. A guy who lived down the street from me in Los Angeles owned one and parked it on front of his house. I never once paused to look at it.
Yes, I know the car was a designed by the legendary Pininfarnia. Didn't matter. I didn't care.
But the NSX had its fans, and plenty of them. So after a hiatus, Honda (Acura's parent company) completely rethought the NSX and rolled out a second-generation of the car. I saw it for the first time at the 2015 New York auto show. My reaction was "Meh."
Later, I saw different versions of the new NSX. More meh. Images of the interior began circulating. Meh.
Then Acura kindly let us borrow the NSX for a few days.
Oh. My. God.
It was almost head-warping how quickly my mind was changed after just a few minutes with the actual NSX, live and in the flesh, sitting behind the wheel, driving the thing.
It was hypnotically beautiful. It was fast and responsive. It was breathtakingly gorgeous.
The new NSX flat-out ravished me. I can't remember having such a profoundly rapturous reaction to a car. I could barely speak. Everything I had thought about the car before was wrong, so wrong.
Let's take a closer look at why I was an idiot to ever doubt the new Acura NSX - and why it was our Car of the Year for 2016:
Photos by Hollis Johnson.