Honda Motor Co., speeding ahead with an overhaul of the premium Acura line, is planning a $70 million central Ohio factory opening in two years to produce the next-generation NSX.
The Tokyo-based automaker said Tuesday it will refurbish an existing facility in Marysville, adjacent to its main North American auto-assembly plant and regional R&D center, to build the racing-style NSX. The factory, dubbed the Performance Manufacturing Center, will employ 100 veteran assembly workers.
“The location of this facility is in the midst of one of the greatest collections of engineering and production talent in the world,” said Hidenobu Iwata, head of Honda’s North American manufacturing operations, in an emailed statement.
Honda, Japan’s third-largest automaker, created the Acura brand for the U.S. in 1986 to expand its customer base in the company’s biggest market. New models including the RLX luxury sedan and revamped MDX crossover are being added this year, ahead of NSX’s return, to reverse a slide in Acura sales that in 2012 were 25 percent below the brand’s peak of 209,610 in 2005.
The NSX factory, Honda’s third auto-assembly plant in Ohio after those in Marysville and East Liberty, will be run by Clement D’Souza, an associate U.S. chief engineer, Honda said. Ted Klaus, a chief engineer with Honda R&D Americas, leads the team developing the car.
Honda has said the NSX may sell for more than $100,000. Klaus and D’Souza declined to provide additional details of the car’s features, price and annual production volume.
Honda began promoting the NSX last year with a Super Bowl ad starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld. When Acura introduced the $89,000 two-seater in 1989, driving enthusiasts embraced it for the speed it generated from a powerful V-6 engine attached to a lightweight, all-aluminum body. Once so hot, the NSX starred in director Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 hit Pulp Fiction, driven by Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe, played by Harvey Keitel.
Acura stopped building it in 2005.
The restyled NSX is being reborn as an all-wheel-drive hybrid, with a V-6 engine augmented by three electric motors to generate the speed of a V-8 engine, the company has said.
U.S. Acura sales rose 14 percent this year through April to 48,852 cars and light trucks, ranking it fifth in luxury volume behind Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota’s Lexus and General Motors’ Cadillac.