To Generation X, the letters “NSX” meant something. Maybe to the men and women of Minato, they meant “New Sports eXperimental,” but to us, they represented the dreams of our adolescence. Even in the 1990s, an elegant era of Japanese car design that brought us the best versions of the Mazda RX-7 and the Toyota Supra, the NSX stood alone as a paragon of technology and fascination. Talk about a tough act to follow for this new .

To those of us old enough to remember, yet young enough to wonder, the original NSX represented more than any marketing materials, any aspirational branding or any numbers on a spreadsheet ever could. The exotic from Acura, and not the offerings from the European, Paleozoic brands of Ferrari and Porsche, was the car that many people my age pictured ourselves owning someday as the sign that we had made it.

Thus, when it was announced in 2007 that Honda would be bringing the NSX nameplate back to life before the end of the decade, anticipation was palpable. So was skepticism. It had so much to live up to. One thing that helped was the exciting revelation that .

So we waited. And we waited.

Rarely has there been so much hype, buildup, and anticipation for a car as there was during the not quite decade of time that we’ve waited for this new NSX. Promises were made, broken, and then made again. A global recession and then sent Honda back to the drawing board more than once.

2010 came and went, and with it, the idea of the V10, making way for a twin-turbo V6 hybrid. Maybe we wouldn’t be getting a big, thumping, brute force-powered supercar after all, but rather a refined, technological, marvelous scalpel? Then when it finally seemed within our grasp,.

Well, it’s now 2016, and Acura has at very long last, delivered on a new NSX. But have they possibly delivered on the promise of the NSX as well as the name?

(Acura needed me to drive the new NSX so badly they provided airfare to Palm Springs, three nights at the Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage, and enough food and wine to feed a small village, and also make said village drunk-dial neighboring small village and tell them how much it misses them.)

The Specs That Matter

The new NSX is powered by a system that’s truly unlike anything we’ve ever seen in a car that stays south of the $200,000 mark. The Sport Hybrid SH-AWD power unit is made up of an all-new, NSX-exclusive, twin-turbocharged, mid-mounted 3.0-liter V6 engine paired with an all-new nine-speed dual clutch transmission and an electric Direct Drive Motor which not only provides instant torque, but also charges the hybrid batteries.

Supplementing this are two electric motors at the front of the car, which Acura calls a “Twin Motor Unit”, that provide power independently to the front wheels, meaning that it that is capable of providing real torque vectoring to all four wheels whenever a driver needs it.

, but to get the brakes, carbon fiber, and audio that you really want, be prepared to pony up closer to $200,000.

Track Tested

My New Sports eXperience was to begin bright and early at the Thermal Club, a private, country-club track nestled in a jarring juxtaposition between fields tilled by immigrant workers who begin their workday before the break of dawn, avoiding the sweltering heat of a town bold enough to call itself “Thermal.”

Acura arranged for Pirelli World Challenge RealTime Acura Drivers Ryan Eversley and Peter Cunningham to conduct the lead/follow session. Each of us was given three 15-minute sessions on track, as Eversley and Cunningham took it in turn to cut a virtual set of ski tracks through the asphalt of the South Palm Circuit for three drivers at a time to follow.

The track is an exercise in patience, with plenty of run off in every tight, slow corner, giving very little chance for any journalist to mangle a six-figure, pre-production car.

Better, Smarter, Faster... Than You Are

The SH-AWD system pulled me through corners with the merest application of throttle, allowing the torque vectoring to urgently direct power to the front wheel that needed it most. It’s almost never wrong to put the power down in the NSX on track. The car only gave me as much power as the traction could handle. Earlier was nearly always better.

, wailing at pitches previously only known to banshees. It’s a perfectly composed, neatly packaged, dare I say… luxurious track car.

And when you understand the purpose of the NSX, you begin to understand that Acura got it exactly right.

It Wins On The Street

The NSX wasn’t designed to be purely a track car. While the typical NSX owner may track his car anywhere from three to four times per year, the rest of the time, the NSX is intended to be a real, viable street car that owners can comfortably and easily daily drive, while still obtaining the feeling of maximum performance. So it was time to leave the track and test the NSX in the environment for which it was truly engineered—the road.

The Verdict

So is this NSX a fitting descendant of the older car that I loved so much growing up? Yes. Well, maybe.

After the road drive was completed Acura was kind enough, or perhaps foolish enough, to toss me the keys to a company-owned 2005 NSX. It was not a museum piece. It was a 47,000-mile example. The seats weren’t perfect. The steering wheel had faded over the years by the California sun.

And while the original NSX may have been a technical marvel in its day, to drive it now serves as reminder of a time when the best cars communicated in analog fashion. They reacted to your inputs. They had a dialogue with you. They became one with you, the driver.

This new NSX asks you to become one with it. To envelop yourself in its comfort, its luxury, its technology, to become as much of a hybrid as it is.

What Acura has done with this new NSX is to take a driving experience that was previously only accessible to the gifted and allow the ordinary (if rather wealthy) man to fly just close enough to the sun to revel in its power and beauty. And if, in order to fly that close, one has to wear a suit of technological armor, is that a price that they should be willing to pay?

That’s up to you. Me? I say it, quickly and easily, without hesitation: hell yes.

Mark “Bark M.” Baruth has multiple endurance racing and SCCA National Solo and Pro Solo trophies to his credit, and has tracked everything from a Fiesta ST to a 991 GT3 on dozens of circuits across America. His writing can be found at The Truth About Cars, Road & Track and Jalopnik. Follow him on and .