Meet Honda’s front-engine NSX
For the past few years, Honda has been permitted to run a mid-engined race car against all the front-engined contenders in Japan’s Super GT class. From 2020 on, however, DTM and Super GT will use the same specs in order to share weekends and make the races more exciting, meaning that everybody will have rear-wheel-drive cars with 2.0-liter turbocharged engines up front. And despite its earlier plans to extend the mid-engined car’s career into the next season, Honda has just revealed its first front-engined NSX.
Proving once again that silhouette race cars can hide anything from a lawnmover’s two-stroke to a cold fusion reactor under their lightweight body panels, Honda’s 2020 NSX Super GT looks almost identical to its 2017 and 2018 GT500-spec cars, apart from the relocated exhaust ports and a few aero tweaks here and there. Not a whole lot of parts are shared with the mid-engined hybrid supercar available at your dealer in the U.S. as the 2020 Acura NSX.
Under the FIA’s Class One rules, Honda’s NSX will compete against the BMW M4, Audi RS5 and Aston Martin Vantage DTM cars, as well as Nissan GT-R and Toyota Supra GT500s. Here’s Honda’s entry next to Nissan’s and Toyota’s: