The Acura NSX, or as it’s known to our global audience beyond North America, the Honda NSX, is more than just a very good car. It’s a stellar supercar, providing oodles of entertaining driving experiences for anyone lucky enough to get behind the wheel. But its primary virtue as a good car means high-mileage examples are not as rare as hen’s teeth – they’re surprisingly easy to come by.
In a recent video for VINwiki, NSX lover Richard Graves goes through the list of highest mileage examples of the Honda/Acura supercar that he is aware of. And he knows a thing or two about the subject, having bought an example of the car with 200,000 miles (321,869 km) on it.
While that’s an almost unbelievably high number of miles for a mid-engine supercar from the ’90s, he says you shouldn’t be that impressed by an NSX with that many miles on it. He estimates that there are dozens of examples out in the world. In fact, since taking ownership of the Acura, he has driven it another 100,000 miles (160,934 km), and he isn’t even impressed by that.
Read: The Original Acura NSX Is Proof That Supercar Buyers Don’t Always Want A Better Car
The Acura / Honda NSX made its debut at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show
“The 300,000 mile [482,803 km] club for the first-generation NSX is not even that exclusive,” Graves says. “Off the top of my head, I can think of probably, an easy dozen, ourselves included, that are over 300,000 miles.”
He reasons that now that the cars are around 30 years old, it didn’t take much driving per year to have a high-mileage NSX today. And since their drivetrains are extremely robust, it’s not hard to keep them on the road for that length of time, either.
The engines are so overbuilt that owners can choose to either run much more power through them than came from the factory, or leave them stock and run “essentially forever.” He advises that, if you’re looking at buying a first-generation NSX, “it’s definitely a maintenance over mileage proposition.”
In 2002, the NSX received a facelift that saw the pop-up headlights dropped for fixed units
As to which example of the car actually have the most miles, well, it definitely has more than 400,000 miles (643,738 km) on it. A few years ago, Honda handed out an official “highest-mileage” plaque to an NSX with 443,000 miles (712,939 km).
However, Graves says he knows of an NSX in Austria that has more. That car, which has been used as a daily driver, had around 470,000 miles (756,391 km) on it.
The nature of the question, “Which NSX has the most miles,” makes it an ever-changing, and difficult-to-settle one. However, with two examples racing towards 500,000 miles (804,672 km), it’s safe to say that the NSX is no exception to the legend of Honda reliability.