In fairness I’m not sure the NSX can stay true to its roots. Back in the 90’s, Honda was really, really good at engine design, and so it wasn’t a huge stretch for them to make a mass-production engine that could hang with the temperamental but incredibly powerful beasts found in supercars.
But that was back when 0-60 in 5 seconds was very impressive, and even the insane supercars like the Lamborghini Diablo didn’t turn in numbers lower than the low-to-mid 4’s. So a car that cost less than half of what a Diablo cost, but was well within 1 second of the car in acceleration, was a pretty amazing beast.
Now cars routinely do 0-60 in less than three seconds. We even have a 4 door luxury sedan that sits comfortably in the high 2’s. We’ve gotten to the point where there isn’t really a whole lot of growth room in acceleration, but we haven’t gotten to the point where no one worries about acceleration anymore.
No matter how good you are at building an engine, we’re in an era of severely diminishing returns. There are no more low hanging fruits of engine design which will allow the mid-tier exotics to hang with the upper echelon anymore, which means Honda isn’t going to be able to produce an NSX that looks all the more impressive because of what it can keep pace with.
Of course, this also means that Honda needs to stop pricing their cars as though they’re in direct competition with the higher-end marques. While I lean toward Acura because I like reliability with my luxury, most people who are not gearheads are going to look at the price of the Acura, and then look at the BMWs and Porsches and Jaguars that are almost the same price, and they’re gonna go with the more prestigious brands.