The wheelbase is stretched. The track is wider. The rear overhang is chopped. And a naturally aspirated V-6 sits behind the cabin, mated to a six-speed manual gearbox.
Whatever you thought the JAS Motorsport Tensei was going to be — a rich guy’s restomod, a cosmetic love letter to the original NSX — the latest details suggest something more ambitious and more expensive than a simple makeover.
Pininfarina pulled the covers back further during Milan Design Week, releasing new images and confirming key mechanical specifications. The Italian design house and JAS Motorsport, a Bologna-based racing operation with decades of Honda competition history, are building what amounts to a ground-up reinterpretation of the first-generation Acura NSX. Left- or right-hand drive, bespoke customization available, and pricing almost certainly cresting seven figures.
The original NSX didn’t need saving. It needed no sequel, no spiritual successor, no reimagining. Ayrton Senna helped develop it.
It taught Ferrari how to build a car that didn’t try to kill its owner on a Tuesday morning commute. It launched the modern supercar era by proving reliability and mid-engine exotica weren’t mutually exclusive. Messing with that legacy is not a casual undertaking.
JAS Motorsport isn’t some garage shop with a dream and an Instagram account. The company has been building and campaigning Honda race cars — NSXs, Civics, the lot — for decades. They know every bolt in the platform.
Pininfarina, for its part, has shaped some of the most beautiful cars in history, from the Cisitalia 202 to the Ferrari Dino. The pedigree on both sides of this partnership is legitimate.
The Tensei’s engine is described as “inspired by the original NSX engine architecture,” which is the kind of language that leaves room for interpretation. The original car’s C30A and later C32B V-6 engines were masterpieces of naturally aspirated engineering. Whatever JAS and Pininfarina have cooked up will reportedly deliver “the highest levels of power, torque, and responsiveness,” but no one is promising Revuelto numbers.
The point here isn’t brute force. It’s character.
And character is what the renderings radiate. The silhouette is unmistakably NSX — the pop-up headlight era’s proportions, that delicate greenhouse — but the wider stance and shorter tail give it the visual authority the original always deserved but never quite possessed. Pininfarina says the interior has been fully reworked for the modern day, though no cabin images have surfaced yet.
The project’s next public appearance will be at the Monaco Historic Grand Prix, April 24-26, where JAS plans to display a 1:5 scale model and debut interior details including upholstery materials and bespoke wheel designs. Key Pininfarina designers — exterior chief Dimitri Vicedomini, chief creative designer Tigran Lalayan, and senior design manager Raffaele Gerace — have been making the rounds at industry events, underscoring how seriously the house is treating this car within its own portfolio.
The restomod market is now crowded enough to have its own clichés: twin-turbo swaps, carbon tubs, seven-figure price tags attached to cars that are fundamentally about nostalgia. The Tensei fits that bracket on price but diverges on philosophy. A naturally aspirated V-6, a manual gearbox, and an extended wheelbase that suggests actual engineering rather than just wider fenders bolted onto an old chassis.
Whether it becomes a worthy successor to the NSX’s legacy or just another ultra-expensive object for collectors who never drive their cars will depend entirely on how it feels from behind the wheel. The ingredients are right. The names on the door earned their reputations the hard way.
Now comes the part where the car has to prove it deserves theirs.
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