If you are a car enthusiast to any degree you likely know the NSX's reputation. If you're fortunate enough to own one, you know it somehow lives up to it, but what most don't know is the massive effort invested in the final stages of its development to make that possible. I'm grateful to have spent over 10 years engineering launchpad hardware for the world's most powerful rockets, and that high-pressure environment has given me some insight into what makes the NSX special, alongside the obsessive skillset to make my own contributions.

Honda spent over 5 years with an abnormally large budget to develop the NSX. They enlisted Pininfarina to create the HP-X concept for inspiration alongside fighter jets, developed new aluminum alloys, and optimized the structure with the CRAY-2 supercomputer, among resource benefits from their Formula 1 program. Yet the crucial je ne sais quoi culminated on top of all that. In February of 1989, the NS-X prototype was unveiled at the Chicago Auto Show with a 3.0L DOHC V6 engine. Shortly thereafter, Honda's CEO issued a directive to add VTEC as it seemed only fitting for the new flagship to include their latest innovation. This was no trivial task, as packaging the larger heads would require reworking the primary body structure right down to the wheelbase.

That same month, Honda handed their prototype over to the Formula 1 driver piloting their engines to victory who just so happened to be testing his McLaren at Suzuka Circuit that day. "I'm not sure I can really give you appropriate advice on a mass-production car,"  Ayrton Senna cautioned, "but I feel it's a little fragile."