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Casting off its heritage as a rear mid-engined car, the newest version of Acura’s NSX sports car was recently caught by our spies at CarPix making some serious hay at Germany’s Nürburgring Nordschleife. Though the engineers may have rotated the engine around the driver compartment from back to front, this NSX has the powerful nose, short rear deck, and aggressive stance of a serious sports car.

Honda has reportedly blessed the car with a 5.5-liter V-10 capable of producing roughly 550 horsepower. Every ounce of that prodigious output will be needed, however, if the NSX is to live up to the high goals set for it by Honda brass. Company CEO Takeo Fukui is on record saying that he would like Honda’s halo car to be able to outpace the dominating Nissan GT-R in a lap of the ’Ring.

While no official times have yet been offered up by Honda, a few industrious spy photographers did manage to clock the NSX at a very unofficial seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds around the North Loop. That’s not a bad place to start, but with the GT-R making a circuit in the sub-seven minute, thirty-second range, Honda may still have some tweaking to do.

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Magazine Issue: Winding Road Issue 36