As automotive niches go, the business of making supercars must be one of the most precarious, as proved by the number of brands which have come and gone over the years: marques like Cizeta, Iso and De Tomaso are mentioned only when the few survivors pop up at high-end auctions. The surviving marques have lasted the years only under the wing of a bigger volume maker: Ferrari and Maserati under Fiat, Lamborghini and Bugatti under the protection of the VW Croup and Lotus lurching from Toyota control to General Motors subsidiary, then Proton and finally Geely. Porsche meanwhile, is either the owner or a subsidiary of the VWGroup depending on which way you interpret the labyrinthine corporate manoeuvres which saw the two close-knit firms forge permanent ties.
Perhaps the less than sound business case for supercar manufacture explains why the Japanese makers had generally dodged out of the high-end performance car game. Until, that was, Honda decided to reinforce to the buying public that the relentless pursuit of technology which made its everyday road cars reliable to the point of being humdrum was also capable of producing crushingly effective performance cars.
Success in F1 was the starting point and with its mid ’80s dominance as an engine supplier fresh in the world’s minds, a road car was the natural progression, the result being the NSX. Designed and built without compromise or the baggage of heritage, it showed that Honda was capable of out-engineering Ferrari not only on the track but on the road, too. Toyota meanwhile had made a brief dalliance in the world of exotica with the 2000GT back in 1967 but since then hadn’t returned to the idea, preferring to establish itself a reputation for unparalleled reliability and proving itself not in F1 but the equally demanding world rallying stage where its cars were f requent winners of safari rallies.
Flying the performance flag for Toyota was
