ACURA NSX TYPE S

Talented yet unappreciated supercar says Sayonara with an upgraded variant, although none of the 350 examples are UK-bound hence the unfamiliar name)

- 

It's always tempting to look at the last of a breed of car and feel vaguely guilty that faint praise has damned it to the point of extinction. Wait! We didn't mean it! Please don't leave! So it is with the Honda NSX, the final example now having left the factory, no longer a warrior from the land of the rising sun but a sunset in the cornfields of Ohio.

As a follow-up act to the original, the reborn NSX had a lot to live up to. Too much, really. The first NSX was an utter revelation at a time when mid-engined Italian exotics leaked and overheated and regularly threw mechanical fits costing thousands to repair.

Instead, why not a gorgeously engineered mid-engined coupé from friendly Honda? This car was Honda's Ferrari F40 moment, the last project personally signed off on by the company's founder, Soichiro Honda. It was burnished by the hallowed loafers of Ayrton Senna himself and was filled with delicately engineered details from the brightest minds of Honda's golden age. Gordon Murray drove one the entire time he was creating the McLaren F1. It was a special car.

From its debut in 2015, the second-generation NSX struggled to capture the imagination. Things weren't helped by Ford releasing its successfully heretofore unseen GT at the same show, but the NSX also failed to fizz with the critics.

Furthermore, it cost McLaren money, yet in the US, where all the cars were made, it came with the same Acura badge as grandad's beige TL saloon. Incidentally, that TL had basically the same 3.5-litre 75deg V6 engine.