The Acura (Honda) NSX is a car I keep forgetting about. I forget how light and quick they are. I space how timeless the design is, both inside and out, even though they were derided as boring on introduction. My mind slips away from the new 1991 NSX I drove, slowly and carefully, back from a body shop while I was working at an Acura dealership while in high school.
I also keep forgetting the damn things are now collectible.
For some, the 1980s were a time of opulent excess, Reaganomics, and Gordon Gekko. For the vast majority (or as we call them these days, the 99%) they were a time of high interest rates, a substandard American automobile industry, and inflation out the wazoo. For those 99%ers, automakers like Honda provided some relief from other stresses in the form of well-engineered, solid, reliable cars some of which were fun to drive while others started down the path of luxury that would ultimately lead to entirely new brands like Acura and Lexus that would end-up taking huge market share away from the German luxury leaders. This 1985 Honda Accord is simple – it has no AC, no radio, no sunroof, manual locks and windows – but is also in amazingly clean condition that would suggest mileage more along the lines of 40K than the still-low 73K it has. Find it here on eBay in Auburn, Washington with a buy-it-now price of $6,500.
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Full disclosure: I owned one of these – a 1988 – for about three years many moons ago. I really wanted a Mercedes-Benz 560SEC or a BMW 635CSi, but at the time (1995) I was a recent college graduate with no money to speak of, and those cars were prohibitively expensive. Besides, ever since a high school friend’s dad bought a Legend Coupe I’d lusted after them, and it was like a bigger, more powerful version of the 1985 Honda Prelude that had served me very well most of the way through college. Find this unusually nice last-year example here on Craigslist in Silver Spring, Maryland with an asking price of $3500.
Power, Poise and a Vanishing Breed: Five V8 Sedans on the Cheap
Every time I turn around these days it seems like another manufacturer is forfeiting good old burbling big-displacement torquetastic motoring for force-fed fours and sixes. It would appear that the V8’s days are numbered, particularly in cars that us regular Joes can lay our hands on without taking out a second third mortgage. Along with the V8s, regular rear-wheel drive seems to be fading into obscurity replaced with all-wheel. Now I appreciate traction as much as anyone, especially after all the snow that we’ve been graced with this winter, but sometimes you want your back wheels pushing, your front wheels steering, and never the two shall meet. It’s definitely old school, but I guess that I am, too.
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2 Comments | tags: Acura, Audi A8, BMW 7-series, BMW E39, British Cars, Cheap V8s, E420, E500, E55 AMG, German Cars, Infiniti Q45, Jaguar XJ8, Japanese Luxury Cars, Lexus LS400, Mercedes W124, Mercedes-Benz S-class, V8 Saloons, V8 Sedans, XJR | posted in Commentary, Totally That Stupid