A Honda NSX Just Sold for $1 Million for the First Time

A Honda NSX, one of the most nearly perfect cars ever made, just sold for over $1 million for the first time.

The 2003 NSX-R sold at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este auction in Italy this weekend for €934,375, or $1.06 million at current exchange rates. The example, painted in Championship White, is one of only 140 NSX-Rs built from 2002 to 2005, and has fewer than 10,000 miles on its odometer. It’s also in pristine condition, with recent service done in 2023.

This NSX-R powered by a 3.2-liter V-6 making 290 horsepower and mated with a six-speed manual transaxle. It was the lighter NSX—264 pounds lighter, to be exact—and made to be an even more focused driver’s car, for a sports car that was already almost a pure driver’s car. In total, 483 NSX-Rs were made, only for the Japanese market.

The story of the NSX, which was first shown in 1989, has graduated into lore, coming out at a time when consumers, especially in America, thought of Japanese cars primarily as slow and small but reliable, the formula that helped Honda and Toyota beat American automakers throughout the 1980s.

The NSX was something entirely different: a sports car that almost instantly became one of the best in the world and made people rethink what they thought they knew about Japanese cars, even after the Toyota Supra. Auto designer legend Gordon Murray owned one, saying that its driving dynamics were second to none. It was the NSX that Murray had in mind as he made the McLaren F1. The model also forced Ferrari to respond with the F355.

But with all that, the NSX has never been in the tier of cars that sell for seven figures, perhaps because there is also a humility about it—the car didn’t even make 300 hp, after all. It’s unusual to see an NSX go for more than $300,000, let alone more than three times that. Top Gear says there was a bidding war for this particular NSX, with bidders “from the U.K., Australia, Argentina, South Africa, and the U.S.”

Whoever the new owner is, one can only hope they put more than 10,000 miles on the odometer and drive the car as it was originally intended.

Click here for more photos of the 2003 Honda NSX-R.

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