The car Tony Stark and Bruce Banner drove off in at the end of 2012’s “The Avengers” is up for sale on Cars & Bids, and the story behind it is far more interesting than anything Marvel put on screen.
It looks like a second-generation Acura NSX Roadster, sleek and futuristic in Hot Rod Red paint meant to echo the Iron Man suit. But underneath that handmade resin and fiberglass bodywork sits a 1991 Acura NSX with 252,200 miles on the clock. The donor car was gutted and reskinned to play the part of a car that wouldn’t exist for another four years.
When “The Avengers” filmed, the second-gen NSX was still deep in development. Acura wouldn’t begin production until 2016, and even then, a roadster version never materialized. So the Acura Advanced Design Studio in Los Angeles drew up the body, Trans FX in California built it, and a classic first-gen NSX gave its life to make it move.
The car had to be fully functional for filming. It rolls, it steers, it drives under its own power courtesy of the original 3.0-liter naturally aspirated VTEC V6 mated to a five-speed manual gearbox sending power to the rear wheels. The headlights are decorative silver trim, the cooling intakes are completely blocked, and the windshield was sourced from a Chrysler PT Cruiser.
Read that last part again. Tony Stark’s windshield came from a PT Cruiser.
Inside, the cabin is pure 1991 NSX. The dashboard, the inclined center console, the physical controls — no touchscreens, no digital clusters. A pair of aftermarket bucket seats replaced the originals, but that’s about it for interior modifications. The filming crew clearly knew their angles, keeping the camera trained on the exterior to maintain the illusion of something from the future.
Acura preserved the car after production wrapped and recently displayed it during the NSX’s 35th-anniversary celebration. Now it’s heading to a new home, with full proceeds going to charity. Two days into the seven-day auction, bidding had already reached $98,500.
There are caveats. You cannot legally drive this thing on public roads. It is classified as a movie prop with fragile custom bodywork.
The listing notes micro-scratches on the bumpers, A-pillars, and doors, paint cracks on the C-pillars, and scuffs throughout the cabin. The quarter-million miles on that V6 are real miles, not movie magic.
But nobody buying this car plans to commute in it. This is a museum piece, a conversation starter, a piece of Marvel history wrapped around Honda’s finest engineering from 1991. The “STARK 33” New York license plate is still attached, same one seen in the film.
What makes the whole thing fascinating is the contradiction at its core. In 2012, Acura needed a car to represent the bleeding edge of automotive technology for the world’s most famous fictional billionaire. Their solution was to take a 21-year-old sports car and cover it in fiberglass.
The first-gen NSX was so mechanically sound, so fundamentally right, that it could convincingly play a car from the future with nothing more than a body kit and a PT Cruiser windshield.
Bidding closes in five days. The six-figure threshold is all but guaranteed. The only question is how far past it the final number lands.
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