Acura to Race New NSX, One-Off Electric Sports Car at Pikes Peak

Centennial hill climb will mark the competition debut for the 2017 NSX.

byWill Sabel Courtney|
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When the field of competitors assembles for the 100th running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb later this month, Acura will have two different sports cars ready to haul ass straight up the side of the Colorado mountain. A pair of 2017 Acura NSXs will be there, of course—but so will an NSX-inspired, entirely-electric all-wheel-drive sports car made specifically for the race.

The electric one-off, which will compete in the Electric Modified division, may look like the NSX on the outside, but its guts share more with the CR-Z time attack car Honda ran at Pikes Peak last year than the turbocharged gas/electric hybrid super sports car it resembles. Packing four separate electric motors, the new racer can independently shuffle torque between the wheels in an electron-enabled version of Acura's Super-Handling All-Wheel-Drive.

Oh, and it packs three times the power of last year's CR-Z. Which won its division and set a record for the Exhibition Class by making it up the hill in 10 minutes and 23 seconds. And it's being driven by Tetsuya Yamano, the same guy who hustled the CR-Z up the hill to that record last year.

Yeah. This new car is gonna be fast.

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As for the pair of NSXs Acura is bringing to compete at Pikes Peak, each will be competing in a different class. The NSX battling it out in the Time Attack 2 category will be entirely stock, except for the safety cage required by regulations; the car fighting in the more aggressive Time Attack 1 class has been lightened by Acura's North American R&D engineers, and will run a custom high-flow racing exhaust. The cars will be driven by James and Nick Robinson, a pair of brothers who are both Acura employees and veteran Pikes Peak hill climbers. Nick won the two-wheeled PP250 division at last year's Pikes Peak Hill Climb, while James drove a first-generation NSX in the event from 2012 to 2015.

And should you feel the need to see even more Acuras, the carmaker will be running an MDX, a TLX, and a stock NSX as pace cars during the event. But let's not lie—we'll all be starting at the ones shooting for records.

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