Pininfarina Will Restomod a 1990s NSX with an Italian Honda Racing Team, With Plans to Sell It to Customers

Since 1990, the Honda NSX (or Acura, if you lived in the U.S.) represented the pinnacle of Honda sports car engineering. Due to that halo-placement, it has also become a highly sought-after vehicle around the world even as it modernized into a hybrid car with AWD. Now, an Italian motorsports team with direct ties to Honda has teamed with legendary Italian design house Pininfarina to take the 1990s NSX and restomod it into the ultimate incarnation while retaining its mid-engine V-6 powerplant. But this isn’t the first time Pininfarina has exerted its influence on the NSX.

JAS and Pininfarina are collaborating on this “derivative” NSX project with the idea it will be “a new, modern definition of Grand Touring.” The first prototype should be released in early 2026, but the companies promise the NSX's high performance and balanced nature will remain the same. The new body, designed by Pininfarina, will utilize carbon fiber that will fit onto an existing donor car with “refined” new mechanical parts. Inside, this redesigned NSX will work as both a right-hand and left-hand drive car and will match the spirit Pininfarina is giving to the new body panels.

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An All-Natural V-6 Engine

On top of that, the original naturally aspirated V-6 will remain but will be re-engineered and developed for higher levels of power, torque, and responsiveness, and will be mated to a six-speed manual transmission. JAS and Pininfarina don’t specify if this engine will be based on the 3.0-liter C30A produced from 1990–96 or the 3.2-liter C32B produced from 1997–05. Only the C32B came standard with a six-speed transmission, but the gearbox for the C32B can bolt on to the C30A without any sort of adaptation aside from the ECU (or removing a resistor in 1991–94 ECUs) and possibly the wiring harness if you’re coming from an automatic-equipped NSX.

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Pininfarina’s NSX Influences

As we mentioned, this isn’t Pininfarina’s first rodeo with the NSX. In 1984, Honda tapped the Italian design studio to create the HP-X concept car. It was a very 1980s design with long side cuts along the wedge-shaped body, but NSX telltales were present as it featured a mid-mounted V-6 and a fighter jet-inspired cockpit. This concept debuted at the 1984 Turin Auto Show and the production NSX came five years later at the 1989 Chicago Auto Show.

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What Is JAS Motorsport?

JAS is an acronym for the last names of its founders, Paolo Jasson, Maurizio Ambrogetti, and Giorgio Shön, who came together in 1995 to form the team. At its start, JAS was a works team—a motorsports outfit with direct ties to a manufacturer—for Alfa Romeo in the International Touring Car (ITC) championship and in the Super Tourenwagen Cup (STC) in Germany.

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In 1998, Honda came along as its partner for racing Accords in the STC before racing in the European Super Touring Cup and the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) in the Super Touring era. JAS has also worked with Honda in Group R3 with a Civic Type-R in the 2011 International Rally Challenge and in the 2013 and 2014 European Rally Championship. JAS Motorsport now competes as a Honda works team in TCR division with the Honda Civic Type-R TCR and, notably, helped develop the customer program for the 2017 Honda/Acura NSX GT3 that won the 2019 and 2020 IMSA GTD-class championships.

When Will the JAS Motorsport Restomod NSX Enter Production?

Eventually, after this concept is complete, JAS Motorsport plans to offer this reworked NSX as an “ultra-limited” series production car from its workshop in Arluno, Milan, Italy. Neither the price nor the name for this ultimate expression of the NSX have been announced, but don’t expect it to be cheap.