Japan’s supercar-killing mid-engined sports car was a revelation when it launched in 1990, delivering European handling and gorgeous looks for a fraction of the price.
Widely regarded as Honda’s flagship product, the NSX was largely based off the design of a 1984 concept by Pininfarina, though the production car ended up being penned by the brand’s in-house team.
This approach continued with the second-generation NSX, launched in 2016 and exited production in 2022, having failed to capture the spirit of its predecessor.
Now it appears a new NSX is on the horizon, though Honda might not have much to do with it.
Design house Italdesign teased on social media that it’s set to reveal an NSX tribute, calling it a “tribute to an iconic car”.
Nothing is known about what it entails, and whether it’ll be a redesign of one of the previous two generations of NSX, or a ground-up concept.
Italdesign – through its founders Giorgetto Giugiaro and Aldo Mantovani – is best known for iconic cars such as the original Volkswagen Golf, the DMC Delorean, and the Maserati MC12, though in recent years it’s penned vehicles for Chinese carmakers.
The announcement of Italdesign producing its own take on the NSX comes amid speculation about what the next-generation Honda sports car will look like.
Honda (or more specifically Acura, its North American luxury division which previously sold the NSX) executives have previously insisted its next-generation sports car would be an electric vehicle, becoming a natural progression of the NSX which started with petrol power and later was a hybrid.
Last year, global executive vice president of Honda Shinji Aoyama said the brand’s first electric sports car would launch in 2027 or 2028 and be “an NSX type of vehicle”, even if it might not wear the famed name.
In June, Honda announced it would wrap up its ‘NSX Refresh Plan’ – providing owners with experts to work on their sports cars – at the end of this year, though it’ll begin supply of “genuine compatible parts” for some discontinued models (including the NSX) from mid-2026.
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