Honda Planned to Build a V-8 Ancestor to the NSX in the 1970s

Car and Driver

7 hours ago

Back in the 1970s, Honda nearly built an ancestor to the NSX supercar.
The car would have featured a V-8 engine with CVCC emissions technology.
Volunteers at Honda's design department recently digitized and reimagined the concept, with input from the original designers.
Before he ran a car company, Dr. Soichiro Honda was a race car driver. He wasn't really any good at it (he crashed in his very first race), but a love of speed emerged from the wreckage and never went away. It's partially the reason for Honda's choice to build a sports car—the S500 roadster—as its first passenger vehicle. In the 1970s, Honda had even bigger dreams: a mid-engined V-8-powered supercar.
A Pre-NSX Prototype
Of course, today we know that Honda did eventually get its world-beating supercar with the Acura NSX. Dr. Honda lived just long enough to see the NSX turned into a reality—not unlike Enzo's last personally approved project being the F40—and you have to imagine he'd smile to see how beloved the car is today. The recent auction sale of a facelifted first-generation NSX-R for the equivalent of more than $1 million proves that Honda's mid-engined moonshot is getting the credit it deserves.
However, wind the clock back and imagine a world where the NSX arrives about 15 years earlier, and with V-8 power mounted amidships. It sounds crazy, but you have to remember that Honda was a fully mature company by the 1970s. While the Civic was a runaway success for its thrift more than sporty handling, the company had found success in Formula 1 racing as far back as the 1960s.
In terms of engineering confidence, both Honda the man and Honda the company were overflowing with it. In one of the cheekier moments from company history, GM executives scoffed at Honda's Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion (CVCC) technology, a clean-burning design that meant the 1975 Civic could pass emissions without a catalytic converter. That's fine for motorbikes and tiny cars, the execs said, you can't do that with a proper V-8.
Honda
Dr. Honda bought a Chevy Impala with a 5.7-liter V-8 and shipped it to Japan, where it was converted to CVCC tech with new cylinder heads, then had it shipped back to the United States. The car promptly passed emissions without a catalytic converter. Mic drop.
Emission standards in the 1970s are often derided for strangling the life out of the muscle-car era, but good engineering can preserve power while still running clean. There's not much information out there about what displacement Honda planned for its potential 1970s V-8, but figure something small and high-revving, typical of the bikes and later performance cars it built.
A Svelte V-8 Supercar
During that time, Honda's designers considered both front-engined and mid-engined layouts, and it was the latter that made it to the full-size clay model part of the design process. Having built actual F1 cars from the ground up, Honda engineers would have had a good grasp of mid-engined design. In sketches, the car looks halfway between a Prelude and a Lotus Esprit.
Honda
Honda
As a concept, the mid-engined Honda sports car didn't make it past the mid-1970s. However, thanks to some volunteers from Honda's design department, the car has been built in static form.
It's only a one-fourth-scale model, or as Derek Zoolander would say, '[it] needs to be at least three times bigger than this.' However, volunteers carefully created a 3-D wireframe model based on the original models and sketches, built out surfaces using software, then brought in the original designers to check things over and offer final approval.
Honda
In model form, this what-might-have-been Honda looks great. Even better, there's no reason why the faithfully measured virtual model couldn't be handed over to the staff at Gran Turismo to be turned into a car you could drive in its racing video game. After all, many concepts find their way into GT. Fancy having a virtual go in a proto NSX with eight cylinders? We bet Dr. Honda would have wanted you to.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. Read full bio