Ahead of its official debut at Monterey Car Week in a couple weeks, Acura dropped a few teasers of its upcoming NSX Type-S. Of course it followed up this totally rad news with some sad news that the NSX’s run as one of the most exciting hybrids ever built—and the most exciting car ever built in Ohio—is coming to an end after the 2022 model year run. The Type-S, then, will be the proper high-power high-intensity send off that the NSX has been begging for. Only 350 will be built for worldwide consumption, with 300 of those earmarked for the NSX’s country of origin, the United States of America.
While the full stats on this monster AWD performance machine have not yet been announced, it’s pretty easy to see where things will go based on the standard car’s numbers. In the “regular” NSX, Acura packs in the performance with a 500 horsepower twin-turbo V6 mounted behind the passenger compartment and three permanent magnet synchronous electric motors (each front motor makes 36 horsepower and 54 lb-ft, while a third wedged between the engine and transaxle produces 47 horses and 109 lb-ft) for a combined 573 horseys and 476 lb-ft of torque.
Electric motor tech has moved on quite a lot in the time since the NSX was introduced way back in 2015. While the V6 can surely take a bit more boost, I would expect a revamp of the electric motors as well. Combined, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Acura produce an extra 100 horsepower from the four-motor setup of the NSX. Tack on a shitload of carbon fiber to reduce the weight a bit, and maybe a set of carbon wheels (if I’m not being too optimistic), and this is going to be an exciting machine. Considering how technologically advanced and quick as shit the NSX is, you can kind of think of this as a Porsche 918 Spyder on a 15 percent-ish budget.
Everyone seemed to go gaga over the Polestar 1, which was basically a lower-performance take on this hybrid formula, but the NSX never got a fair shake. I think this car is one of the most exciting new vehicles to launch in the last decade, but from the get go it was treated like an also-ran. And that’s in spite of a 3.1-second 0-60, 11.2-second quarter mile, and 191 mile per hour top speed. This has all of the performance chops of an R8 or 911 Turbo, but with the added benefit of hybrid tech.
Interestingly, while Acura has only shifted about 2500 units of the second-gen NSX worldwide, it is going to continue pursuing hybrid and electric sports cars in the future. NSX has been, since its inception, the kind of car that re-writes the rules of what a performance car can be, and I expect whatever Acura does next to be properly exciting. The king of performance hybrids is dead (dying?), long live the king!