The Acura NSX has long been heralded as the “everyday supercar” that’s priced competitively and is as reliable as any of its sedan and SUV stablemates. However, since it’s second coming in 2017, the NSX hasn’t been selling well. In 2020, Acura sold only 128 units while competitors like Audi sold 281 R8s, Nissan sold 304 GT-Rs, and Porsche sold over 8,800 911s in the same amount of time.

Acura made a few noteworthy changes in 2019, however, they didn’t do much in terms of boosting sales. So, why is the Acura NSX unpopular?

The NSX’s interior is cheap

Let’s start from the inside out; while the interior of the Acura NSX is undeniably upscale and futuristic in terms of the way it looks and feels, there are some cheap parts to it. As Drive Tribe pointed out, a lot of switchgear – namely the infotainment system, the console buttons, and even the steering wheel – are pretty much straight out of a Honda Civic. And while it’s easy to forgive Acura for scraping from the company parts bin, you probably don’t want to pay $160,000 for a supercar only to feel like you’re sitting in a $20,000 Civic.

Not much steering feel

While we haven’t personally driven a new Acura NSX, the critics over at Auto Guide have and noted that the car’s steering feels too artificial for what it is. Of course, we can’t really blame any car company for that considering electric power steering is the norm and there’s often no way of getting it to feel like an analog steering rack. But we can also see why critics would complain considering you’re buying a supercar from a company whose tagline is “Precision Crafted Performance,” so where’s the “precision” part?

The competition offers a better value

The Acura NSX is powered by a twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6 engine that’s mated to a tri-motor set up and produces a staggering 573 hp. From a standstill, the NSX can get up to 60 mph in just 2.9 seconds and around the Nürburgring in just 7:36:00, which is downright impressive. That’s a respectable time to get around that fabled racetrack, however, it’s still slower than the times logged by the competition including the Porsche 911, Audi R8 V10, and the Nissan GT-R, which is almost 10 seconds quicker.  

The Acura NSX could use a price adjustment

It’s clear to see that while the Acura NSX does what it’s intended to do, which is to provide a supercar experience every day while still being reliable, but it still falls short of competing with others in its segment. But if you were to examine the NSX in a vacuum and forget about all of the other high-priced metal that can chase it down on the most challenging race tracks, you still have an amazing exotic that can be comfortably driven like a regular street car and doesn’t require an “engine-out” service every time you need to change the oil.

There’s a lot of value in what the car has and from what we can tell, it still holds true to what the original NSX was, although, it just has more fancy engineering tied to it, which is why it currently costs $160,000 for a new one. But maybe the car just needs a price adjustment.

In fact, Acura was giving a nearly $20,000 discount to any NSX buyers last month, which effectively knocked the price down to $139,871. That’s still a lot of money, but even the uber-rich want to save a buck at the end of the day. So maybe it all comes down to pricing, after all, a $99,000 NSX sounds like a much better value proposition.