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I have never heard the NSX history presented this way before. The generally accepted version is that the 348 was a fat, slow, and complacent product and the NSX put the fear of God in Ferrari, resulting in the F355.
FH3 November Alpinestars Car Pack
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I have never heard the NSX history presented this way before. The generally accepted version is that the 348 was a fat, slow, and complacent product and the NSX put the fear of God in Ferrari, resulting in the F355.
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It's very much unfounded, but there are rumors Ferrari nearly went bankrupt during the F355's development, because they were trying to make it better than anything Honda, Porsche and whoever else was offering, and Luca Di Montezemolo didn't care how much it cost. Thankfully for them, it worked.
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Crap, I meant the Falcon. Shows how much I'm into it
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The two things aren't mutually exclusive. What I've been told by someone who was involved in the development of the 348 and 355, Ferrari was disquieted by Honda even getting close to their V8 car with the NSX. The guys in red were suddenly aware that any manufacturer could build a car that matched the performance of their best-selling model for a fraction of the price. If Honda had launched the NSX in 1988, however, it would have been an even worse scenario for Maranello - the eXperimental was designed to compete in raw performance figures with he 328, and it'd have been "that Honda that makes as much power as a Ferrari". The 348 was instrumental in avoiding that kind of scenario, and it's probably the reason Honda didn't fully get in the supercar business afterwards, leaving the NSX as a competitor for the Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline rather than chasing Ferrari and Porsche.
Arguably, the same could be said for Porsche, which replaced the air-cooled 964 after only four years in production, and poured an enormous amount of resources in developing the 993 - both manufacturers suffered of poor financial health through the whole 90s as a result of the cost of developing new models, a choice that was influenced by the launch of the NSX as much as new automotive safety and emission standards which made updating yet another time twenty or thirty-years old platforms impossible.
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Your original post makes the NSX seem like a mis-timed product that was somewhat underwhelming and was easily countered by Ferrari and Porsche before it even hit the market. This simply isn't true. The NSX shook up the market and changed the way European supercars were designed and built.
I lived through that time, and this:
"Well, too bad that Ferrari introduced the 348, and Porsche updated the aging 930 in 1989, one year before the debut of the now-underpowered and not-all-that-futuristic-looking car."
is not the way it was.
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Fair enough, I'll concede that the way I put it makes it seems like Ferrari and Porsche had a good laugh at the Japanese attempts to make a supercar - which they didn't. Still, the original NSX was supposed to bury the 930 and 328, and it needed to, mostly because it needed to overcome the market disadvantage of coming from a brand best known for econoboxes. It did, but by the time it was introduced in the market, the competition had moved to a "safe level" again, and had bought themselves time to update their products more vigorously - something that left Honda's head honchos ever-so-slightly disappointed, and would eventually reduce Honda's motivation to pursue their opponents for a long while.
One can only imagine what would've happened if the NSX was introduced sooner, or the tired Porsche and Ferrari products refreshed later, or the two European manufacturers had decided to forgo pricy end-life updates on their models and skip from the 328 to the 355 and from the 930 to the 993 - a move that could've even seemed clever in a world where they had virtually no competition. Would Ferrari and Porsche have managed to retain their market share in the US against a car which couldn't rely on the prestige of its marque if it was a much better, rather than equal or even slightly less impressive, performance car? If they didn't, I doubt they would've been able to develop their next products without going bankrupt.
P.S: rumor has it that the reason Ferrari (the man, not the company) wanted the 348 developed is that a little birdie from Pininfarina told him that the Honda HP-X was only supposed to test the market's reaction to the idea of a Honda supercar. Regardless of the truth of this rumor, the proverbial brick had been shat at least a couple of years before 1990.
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Stupid question I suppose but I assume a Honda version of that new NSX also exists right?
Now that would definitely take the Limp Bizkit if that was a DLC, same car just a different badge.
Maybe right hand drive in a desperate effort to justify it
Now that would definitely take the Limp Bizkit if that was a DLC, same car just a different badge.
Maybe right hand drive in a desperate effort to justify it
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Yep, the Spirit R's absence is an utterly strange one given T10's penchant for "end of the breed / best performing only" inclusions. In the case of the FD, 300ZX, Supra, ST205 and (poorly-modelled) SW20, they went for the last USDM versions, which is a little sad.
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Yes four times around the car park and back in for another yes! While everyone is getting their knickers in a twist about which version of the S13/S14/S15 we got/should have got, we are completely missing out on the S10, S110 and especially the S12 Silvias.If it's gotta be another S-chassis, why not this:
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I
The XR Falcon GT is the car that really kickstarted Australia's love affairs with V8 engines, and their use in comically impractical situations, such as racing on the harrowingly tight downhill corners of Mount Panorama, or escaping from post-apocalyptic biker gangs and guzzoline barons.
While the idea of sticking a Mustang V8 in a chassis designed for inline-six engines and grocery-getting must've seemed crazy back in the day, the First of the V8 Interceptors dragged Holden and Chrysler Australian in the world of motor racing by their hair. By 1970, the once-competitive Austin Minis and Lotus Cortinas were relegated to eating the dust those Australian Muscle Cars lifted.
Handling-wise, it feels like a more primitive and cruder version of the XY GTHO already present in the game at launch... And come to think of it, that's exactly what it is.
You can't forget the original Mustang was based on a shortened Falcon chassis. And thus shared pretty much all major components. Thus it was always designed with a V8 in mind.
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With just over 300 left in UK I'm not surprised. Can't remember if they were produced in high numbers anyway...
Edit: 2308 built.
https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/talbot_sunbeam_lotus
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