If you're familiar with Japanese Cars at all, you would have certainly heard the name Mugen in passing on more than one occasion. But I bet you'd never have associated them with a building an NSX over twenty years ago.
Well known throughout the tuning world, Mugen was formed in the early 70's by Hirotoshi Honda, son of the original founder of the Honda Motor Company.
Mugen primarily tune and race Honda vehicles in various motorsport disciplines, and also develop and sell aftermarket parts to amateur Honda enthusiasts worldwide. As we can see, they also fancied their chances at building their own car designs from time to time.
The image of the Mugen NSX we've used in this article is taken from the "What's Mugen" catalogue released some time in the 90's. Regarding the Mugen NSX, it states:
Production and sales of original automobile is our long-cherished dream. In 1984, as an initial step toward the dream, we manufactured and began sales of aerodynamic body kit, sport muffler and other parts for Honda Ballade CR-X.
Since then, Mugen developed various kind of decorative parts for exterior and interior, and functional parts including aluminum alloy wheels, suspensions and mufflers for Honda automobiles. Additionally, we have prepared ourselves to manufacture our own car by developing automobile-related items, namely original apparel, key holders and special emblems.
It was "Mugen NSX" unveiled in January 1992, though it was a prototype, that allowed us to make a significant step toward our dream.
Pretty cool!
We can't really find too much more information on the NSX, but King Motorsports Unlimited, the sole authorised Mugen distributor in the US, have released scans of never-before-seen spec sheets.
And for a car that would now be over 20 years old, it sounded like something very special indeed.
Click the images below to download the super-high resolution versions we've tidied up (probably the best quality pictures you'll find online) of both the NSX and the spec sheets.
Here's the spec sheet. "Cassette deck is not installed" - bummer.
Sources:
http://www.kingmotorsports.com/blog/post/Mugen-What-Nearly-Happened-in-the-90s.aspx
http://www.geocities.jp/chiibo_take/mugen05.html
Over to you, let us know what you think in the comments below! Or, as always, create your free account to join the JapClassifieds community and sell your car(s) for free.
Meh, this one’s not too surprising, however it could’ve been a start, had it been initiated – something the 17 years younger NSX RR should’ve also done. Despite that reality, at least this NA1 has a far more pleasant exterior than the typical popup bubbler (not to screw with the FD3S or anything), and unlike the regular variant, this saidtobe has no electronically restricted speed gate (both power and top speed).