When It Comes to Acura’s New NSX, Sellers Are in Driver’s Seat

Suppose you want to buy Acura’s new two-seater sports car, the NSX, from Nesen Acura in Thousand Oaks. You arrive with the $80,000 or $90,000 needed to buy the car, but first you want to test drive it around the block.

Forget it. Tim Driscoll won’t let you.

“All I need is for that car to get into a little accident, and then what have I got?” said Driscoll, Nesen’s sales manager. For $90,000, will he even let people sit in it first? After a pause, he replied, “On occasion, I’ve been known to.”

Driscoll isn’t the only Acura salesperson taking few chances. The sleek NSX, made by the Acura division of Honda Motor Co., is one of the hottest cars in America and especially hot in California. Like the Mazda Miata craze of a year ago, the NSX is commanding sizzling premiums of 50% or more over its sticker price because far fewer NSXs are available than people who want one.

“I’ve been selling cars for 45 years, and I’ve never had anything like this,” said Buss Jeager, president of Glendale Acura, which has sold four NSXs, one for $95,000.

The mid-engine car carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $61,000 ($65,000 for automatic transmission) and represents the first attempt by a Japanese car maker to invade the ultra-luxury sports market. The NSX resembles some models of Ferrari and taps Honda’s experience of building engines for Formula One race cars. Auto magazines and other reviewers fell over themselves praising the car. The NSX “takes our breath away” and is a “superb driving machine,” Road & Track magazine gushed a year ago.

But because Honda has made only 3,000 NSXs for sale in the United States this year, car buffs are offering up to $95,000 to acquire one. (An additional 2,000 are being sold in Japan and Europe.)

Speculators are also cashing in. Many U.S. dealerships get only one NSX per month, so would-be buyers often must wait weeks before taking delivery. The speculators, who already have their NSXs, try to turn a quick profit by selling their cars to people who don’t want to wait.

“I’m looking for somebody who wants one right now,” said Dr. Robert Wyrick, an Atlanta dentist who advertised his black NSX in a Los Angeles newspaper. Asking price: $95,000. “Out there in Hollywood, I figured somebody would have more money,” Wyrick said.

NSX owners in Colorado, Florida and other states are also advertising in Southern California, hoping to find buyers who can’t bear to wait. Dr. David Crawford, a Denver veterinarian, is selling his red NSX for $95,000, and “we’ll deliver it, or you can come get it,” said his associate, John Barker. He declined to say what Crawford paid.

Not every dealer is waiting for the highest bid. Steve Neville, sales manager at Acura 101 West in Calabasas, said he prefers selling the car to previous customers and other local residents because it helps build his business. As a result, he said, one of the four NSXs that he’s sold went for as low as $70,000.

Neville, incidentally, does allow a test drive once a customer has agreed to buy the car as a way of “consummating” the sale, he said.

Some drivers don’t have to worry about big markups. California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a fan of expensive sports cars, recently bought an NSX for sticker price. Honda acknowledged that it asked a dealer to sell the car to the San Francisco Democrat for $60,000 but said it was promised nothing in return.

The NSX reached dealers’ showrooms in August, but it had already made automotive waves for several months. The car’s aerodynamic body and engine block are made of an aluminum alloy, and its V-6 engine can take the car from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in less than six seconds. Its top speed is 170 m.p.h.

The hoopla helped create the pent-up demand that is obliterating the sticker price. Similarly, when Mazda unveiled its Miata sports convertible in July, 1989, with a sticker price of $13,800, the car actually sold for up to $20,000. That’s because Mazda tried to limit U.S. production to 20,000 vehicles in the last half of 1989. (It eventually sold 23,000.) Mazda expects to sell 40,000 Miatas this year, and, a spokesman said, “supply has pretty much caught up with demand.”

That’s not likely to happen with the NSX soon. Honda has given no indication that it will boost production, so there’s no telling when the NSX’s typical market price will fall back toward its sticker price.

In fact, the NSX alone is not seen as a major contributor to Honda’s earnings. But it could draw additional attention to Honda’s other Acura cars--such as the newly designed Legend introduced this month--and place Honda in the same elite niche as Porsche and Ferrari.

“We’re using the car to build our public image,” said Acura 101’s Neville. Indeed, as part of the sales agreement, those who buy an NSX from Neville must leave it on his showroom floor until he gets another so the car can keep drawing traffic.

Meanwhile, Acura dealers are enjoying their NSX bonanza--and cultivating the car’s rarefied image. Many dealers don’t keep waiting lists of would-be buyers but rather start taking offers after putting new NSXs in their showrooms. Effectively, they’re holding auctions.

Driscoll, the Thousands Oaks dealer, said ballplayers and movie stars have pestered him about the NSX. But, he said, “I wanted everybody to have a shot at the car,” adding that it has taken him less than a week to sell each of the two NSXs he’s had in the showroom. “The one who offered the most money was the one we dealt with.”