The 911 GT3 Honda Used For NSX Benchmarking Contained A Hidden Message From Porsche
When chatting to Nick Robinson - vehicle dynamics project leader for the NSX - last month, he went through a list of cars the team had used for benchmarking. An Audi R8 GT was one of them, as was a 991 Porsche 911 GT3. Nothing unusual there - manufacturers often purchase rival cars to study and learn from various aspects, and in the case of the 911 it was to examine the exceptional steering. Only, the idea is you’re not supposed to get found out by the manufacturer.
Honda had initially managed this, however speaking to Automotive News, Robinson told of how Porsche discovered the real owner of the GT3 in question. The car was recalled by Porsche to change the con rods, at which point it seems the game was up.
Upon the car’s return, Honda’s engineers found a cheeky little message left under the engine cover: “Good luck Honda from Porsche. See you on the other side.” I think we can take that as Porsche saying ‘bring it on,’ don’t you?
Robinson also spoke about the McLaren 12C his team studied, which was never ‘discovered’ by the British manufacturer, although there was a little curiosity as to what they’d been up to with it. “They wanted to know, where did you go 205 mph? What track?” Robinson said.
To find out what sort of car all this benchmarking and studying resulted in, make sure you read our full Honda NSX review.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Nice to see manufactures joking around with each other!
Personally, I would have been a little more blunt….
All car companies do it. Ive driven a Vanquish used by Aston to compare with competitors cars - only they added 80hp to it to make it keep up :)
Instead of writing “Good luck Honda from Porsche, see you on the other side”, why didn’t Porsche write: “Good luck to you Honda, we’ll be waiting for VTEC to kick in, yo”?
Missed opportunity.
should be top 10 comments of the year. would have been a major troll had porsche done this
Because they’re German. They once made a book about humor, it was one page long and comprised entirely of the dictionary entry for “humor”
Boom.
COTW for sure
Abzillah
Oiiiii
Well, at least Porsche were sporting about it. If Chevy were doing this, I suspect they’d say “Pfft: how does our Corvette Z06’s ass look? ‘Cos you’d better get used to looking at it!”
It’s like spying and spying and spying and spying..
who knew, Porsche has a sense of humor :p
Germans actually have a crude and kinky sense of humour.
They should’ve said “We had VVT first!”
That has Alfa Romeo
Honda engineers inspected Porsche and … WTF! This is alien tec!
they didn’t have a supercar of their own to use as base model for testing purpose anyway.
You are understimating Honda engineers a bit too much. When the original NSX was putting the glasses on every single supercar back then , Porsche was trying to figure out how to make their cars not braking after moving 5 meters.
They should’ve souped up the car a bit, at the expense of engine/drivetrain-life-expectancy.