1991 Acura NSX – NSX Anew

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There’s no shortage of bespoke carmakers and auto stylists on the market who’ve created a name for themselves by thoroughly reimagining perfectly good sports cars. In America, there’s the Hennessey Venom GT, which is based on a Lotus Exige but stretched to fit a V8 and restyled to have an even more menacing and exotic appearance. And in Japan there’s popular Mazda RX restylist RE Amemiya, that has produced numerous types of thoroughly reinvented RX-7s, including the futuristic Genki 7 concept.

When an individual enthusiast takes on a design project as extensive or ambitious, but that’s exactly what Jeff Hoffman has done with his radically restyled ’91 Acura NSX, even though it’s a far rarer thing. This is not your usual bolt-ons and body kit build–far from it. The most diehard of NSX fans will almost certainly miss several of the finer details at first, but because Jeff’s restyling of his NSX is so thorough and so cleanly executed.

Your journey from teenage auto enthusiast to founding father of Carbon 6 Composites, helping to make custom parts for the NSX community, started in the late ’90s when the tuner market exploded in to the mainstream. As Jeff explained, I went from doing high-end audio systems to focusing much more about the performance side when i got older. I always wanted something different than all the others, so although I was really more of a German car guy at first, I had the ability to drive a friend’s NSX, and I was hooked when I got behind the wheel. On paper, the factory NSX numbers are nothing to write home about, but the response and feel of the car are the best. You will discover a reason businesses like McLaren looked to the NSX for inspiration. There is a purity about it that a great many have been inspired by.

After that fateful testdrive, Jeff immediately started looking for an NSX of his own and came across this ’91 in bone-stock condition and with just 54K around the odometer. It wasn’t colour he wanted, but it was too clean to pass up. And so much like that, Jeff was the proud new owner of arguably the most important car they have ever built, a true exotic sports car with daily driver reliability as well as a price tag that didn’t require One-Percenter status. As Jeff told us, Originally, I purchased a little ‘parts drunk’ in the first version of the project and lost direction. I think sometimes when you start at ‘A’, as soon as you get to ‘Z’ mod ‘A’ doesn’t make sense anymore. That’s when I realized I would need to make most of theis very what delivered Carbon 6 Composites in 2003, which included recruiting a few friends who were also interested in the auto performance aftermarket, one a high design engineer for a military company, another a tailor and upholsterer with 3 decades of experience, and a third who had vendor relationships from the tuner market. According to Jeff, I wanted a JGTC-inspired (Super GT) track toy but with a more modern look. The automobile is now a development platform for some of the parts we make, and it also generally spends more time around the street than at the track, but I still get a chance to stretch its legs every once in a while. With the monster brakes along with the new mono-ball suspension setup we make, it’s an extremely capable track toy, without a doubt. If my ability to drive were just like the car.”, now only”

The exterior is, naturally, the part of Jeff’s NSX that makes the most significant impact, and for good reason. A number of you may be thinking, Hey, is a Sorcery kit? and you wouldn’t be all wrong. Some off-the-shelf parts are already used, including a Route-KS hood and Sorcery front bumpers, front fenders, and rockers, but Jeff completely redesigned the rear part of the car.

One of the most radical change was getting rid of the factory B-factory and pillar engine hatch and in their place employing a 6-window design, including rear side glass and a totally redesigned and contoured engine hatch. The trunk has been blended into fit the brand new lines of your hatch, and also the more pronounced sloping belt line also gives this utterly unique NSX a far more raked and aggressive profile. The sideview mirrors can be a special limited production part (only 12 sets made) that Carbon 6 produced specifically for this project, along with theas it feeds the engine’s ScienceOfSpeed individual throttle-body intake system and helps keep intake air temperatures down. There’s several clever routed and hidden internal ducting that directs air from the other external intakes scoops towards the radiator, brake ducts, and side-mounted oil cooler. It’s this level detail that truly takes Jeff’s NSX up a notch from show car to fully functional track day weapon ‘NSX GTR’ license plate worthiness.

, although there’s a lot more to Jeff’s reinterpretation of your NSX than immediately meets the eye Under that redesigned rear hatch is an internally stock but totally refreshed C30A (by Jeff himself) V6 designed with the aforementioned ITBs, custom stainless headers, as well as a Sorcery GT exhaust system. The ITB system doesn’t add the maximum amount of horsepower as a turbo or supercharger, but it really does bring the torque curve into a more usable rpm range, and it also delivers incredible throttle response, Jeff says.

The brake and suspension system modifications are far more extensive than the engine tuning, including a seriously cool variable ride height system from Umbrella Auto Design that mounts on top of the JIC dampers and Swift springs and allows Jeff to raise the ride height as much as 3 inches, even while driving. The endlinks and tie rods are also updated to mono-ball Heim joints for increased stability under lateral load, and the factory brakes replaced with custom, full-floating, 14-inch front and rear rotors along with Brembo six-piston monoblock calipers off a Porsche Cayenne up front and four-piston Brembos in the rear from the front of anyThe inside of Jeff’s NSX has been thoroughly overhauled from top to bottom, together with a seamlessly integrated audio and navigation system from a late-model Acura RDX. As Jeff puts it, I guess I really liked the notion of ‘What would Honda do? ‘. The steering wheel has stirred up a lot of debate, and yes, it’s out of a Civic. In this instance, it just works. They all looked ‘aftermarket.’ The size of the Civic wheel and the cabability to integrate the controls to the RDX audio, navigation, and Bluetooth system made it an ideal fit. Tough to argue with Jeff’s reasoning or the final result, though i have had some different aftermarket wheels.

The rest of the interior has been painstakingly wrapped in Alcantara leather and brushed-aluminum trim. Being a dealer for Ultrasuede and Alcantara myself, I have seen many interiors. I wanted a thing that was race inspired but comfortable. My good friend Steve (a tailor by trade for longer than 30 years) helped me to get the interior just the way I wanted. He’s a real pro, Jeff says. Even the NSX-R replica seats and Civic steering wheel have been wrapped for a fully integrated supercar-spec interior treatment.

Spend time to take it all in, and it’s impossible not to be utterly gob-smacked by the extent to which this 24-year-old Japanese classic has been transformed into an entirely modern supercar. According to Jeff, My passion and interest has always been composites. I couldn’t have done it without my partner Kevin at Carbon 6 Composites, or Tom at RP Motorsports, the best wheel guru [who helped Jeff nail down the perfect staggered fitment around the Advan RS wheels], although this NSX was destined to be my ultimate, no-compromise development project. As much act as I’ve done myself, it would be nothing with no skill and knowledge of my close friends that are also section of the NSX community.