The Second-Generation Honda NSX Was Almost A V10 Lexus LFA Rival

Barring some incredible turn of events, the Lexus LFA will forever go down in history as the only Japanese production car powered by a V10 engine. Quite possibly the greatest V10 road car of all time, too, depending on who you ask.

There’s an alternate timeline, though, where the 2008 recession never happened and the LFA had a contemporary rival pretty close to home. That car? The Honda NSX. No, seriously.

Let’s rewind back to 2005 for the moment. The NA2 Honda NSX – famously a mid-engined, V6-powered car – was in its final year of production and without a direct replacement in clear sight. At least until Honda’s posh North American arm, Acura, confirmed a successor was in the works.

No timeframe was put on the car, but it’d have been fair to presume it’d be another mid-engined sports car. Perhaps something V6-powered to compete with the inbound R35 Nissan GT-R, right?

Err, no. The 2007 Detroit Auto Show came around, and so did the Acura Advanced Sports Car Concept – a front-engined, rear-driven sports car, reportedly to spawn a road car powered by a large-capacity V10.

Non-coincidentally, it turns out, a stretched-looking, UK-registered Honda S2000 with an engine capacity of ‘5000cc’ as stated by the DVLA was spotted doing laps of the Nürburgring around the same time.

By 2008, a heavily camouflaged car resembling a road-ready version Acura concept was a common sight at the ‘Ring as well as grainy images on various internet forums, and putting in times to frighten the R35 GT-R.

Sadly, everything came to a giant halt when the 2008 financial crisis hit. Honda’s profits dropped a dramatic 81 per cent as a result, and it needed to cut costs fast. Sadly, that meant culling the V10 NSX right as production neared.

While that car would never make production, it did go on to become a cult hero in motorsport. By 2009, Honda was still competing in the original NSX in Japan’s Super GT series in its flagship GT500 class, despite it going out of production four years earlier.

That year had seen a regulation change, requiring all cars competing to be front-engined, rear-driven and based on a production car, with a one-season exception granted for the mid-engined Honda in 2009. Handy for a short-term solution, but it didn’t solve the long-term problem that the Japanese manufacturer didn’t have a contemporary production car to replace it for 2010 onwards.

Which is where the stillborn V10 NSX project found a new lease of life. It was reported that a quirk in the GT500 ruleset allowed ‘production-ready’ cars to form the basis of a competitor, rather than one strictly on sale. Given that the new NSX had been so far along in development, it met the criteria.

Thus, the Honda HSV-010 GT was born. Partly making us sad, because it gave us a look at what the road-going NSX should’ve been, but happy we now had a new niche race car to obsess over for years to come and maybe pull out a written feature on one random Wednesday in July down the line.

Unfortunately, the HSV-010 made do without a V10 engine, instead using a 490bhp 3.4-litre V8 based on the unit Honda campaigned in the Formula Nippon open-wheel series. It would go on to compete in three seasons of Super GT, taking 10 race wins from a total of 37 entries.

2014 would see it retired as regulations changed again. It would be replaced by another attempt at reviving the New Sportscar eXperimental – the mid-engined, hybrid NSX Concept-GT. As you’ll know, that one did make the road eventually.