Honda enthusiasts are a special bunch…
People are losing their minds over the news someone dropped $8,500 at auction for a first-gen Acura NSX that spent 20 years underwater in a river. They’re justified in freaking out over that tidbit of truth being stranger than fiction because photos posted to Facebook by Becca Nicole Johnson show the Japanese supercar (and we’re using that term loosely) was in about as horrible of shape as you’d imagine.
Check out an historic underwater car grave here.
But here’s the thing: Honda enthusiasts will pay obnoxious amounts of money for a Civic Type R when they could take that same cash and get a vehicle that’s two times more powerful. And while the NSX was a technological wonder when it came out, European manufacturers quickly leapfrogged it, leaving Honda in the dust as it didn’t bother to update its so-called supercar, finally sunsetting it after the turn of the century. Yet people continued shelling out big bucks for something which was surpassed by rather pedestrian vehicles by that point.
So there’s something special about the Honda crowd, something you no doubt have noticed before. They genuinely believed back in the day that V-TEC was better than forced induction (had more than a few explain that to me in ways that were so divorced from reality they were laughable) and that a 200-horsepower Civic could outpunch a Dodge Viper.
The person who bought this absolutely trashed Acura NSX reportedly has plans to fully restore it, although that might be ditched in favor of making it a “track machine.” Just wait until they find out how much a full restoration will cost, especially considering what happens to cars that have been submerged in water for years on end. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be surprising if the restoration costs more than just buying a cherry NSX somewhere. Even making this NSX a track toy is going to be costly, but that’s the new owner’s decision and business.
As for why the Acura NSX was in the river in the first place, this is yet another case of a vehicle reported stolen and found years later in a body of water. Everyone has their opinions about why that happens, so draw your own conclusions.
Source: Road & Track
Images via Facebook
