Rare Zanardi Edition NSX comes back from the brink, just like the legend himself

By Brendan McAleer, 2019-01-15

When Mitch Farner was a boy, he convinced his mother to drive him down to his local Acura dealership and shine her car’s headlights into the showroom so he could see the NSXs parked there. Later, he would get a job working at that dealership to be closer to the car he loved. When Farner was 18, he bought a crash-damaged 1991 NSX and repaired it over the course of a year. In his 30s, he bought the Championship White 1994 NSX that he now owns, which is well-maintained but not a garage queen, with 240,000 miles on its odometer.

For Farner, the Acura NSX has always been the car. Sometimes he’ll even get under his 1994 and just lie underneath it in the garage, looking for Soichiro Honda’s spirit in the engineering. So, when he began hearing from friends that a rare 1999 Zanardi Signature Edition NSX had shown up in a nearby wrecking yard, severely damaged, he knew he had to act.

“It made me sick to my stomach to think of it being picked over and parted out,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t let this car die.”

Zanardi Edition Acura NSX Joe Lomoriello

Just 51 Zanardi Edition NSXs were built for the U.S. market in 1999, a celebration of Alex Zanardi’s back-to-back victories in the CART series in 1997 and ’98. Serial number 0 was built as a media-loan vehicle, while serial number 1 was fitted with a European VIN, and presented to Zanardi himself. The other 49 cars were sold to lucky Acura enthusiasts who were quick enough to get to the front of the line.

While the NSX is most commonly associated with the late Ayrton Senna, the race car driver who helped fine-tune the car’s chassis, any vehicle that bears the signature of Alex Zanardi is something very special indeed. Born in Bologna, Italy, Zanardi began racing karts somewhat later than other notable racing drivers, building his own kart from cast-off pieces and bits of pipe. An iron will and daring talent would see him rise to the pinnacle of motorsport: F1.

However, it was in IndyCar and CART that he would have his greatest success, including probably the most famous racing pass of all time. In 1996, at the final race of the IndyCar series, Zanardi took a risky and aggressive move through the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca in his Reynard-Honda, putting two wheels in the dirt and shooting right over the rumble strips. The pass is sometimes called the Zanardi Line, and is now banned, but it worked then.

Building a car worthy of such a hard-charging driver was a tall order. Like every other first-generation NSX, each Zanardi Edition was handmade in Honda’s Takanazawa plant in Tochigi, Japan, a purpose-built facility that would later produce the S2000.

Zanardi Edition Acura NSX Joe Lomoriello

As a 1999 model, the Zanardi got the larger 3.2-liter V-6 and six-speed manual transmission of the later NSXs. The engine produced the same 290 horsepower and 224 lb-ft of torque as a standard NSX. However, most NSXs at the time were ordered with the T-roof and other weight-adding accessories. Compared to a contemporary NSX-T, the Zanardi was some 149 pounds lighter.

Weight was saved by starting out with a fixed-roof configuration with single-pane glass in the rear, replacing the power steering with full manual rack-and-pinion, fitting a set of lightweight BBS alloy wheels, installing a lighter battery, and using a lightweight rear spoiler.

Having improved the power-to-weight ratio, Acura next tackled the suspension. Shocks and springs were stiffened, particularly up front, with a larger rear stabilizer bar, and an overall reduction in ride height by 0.4 inches. Some special interior trim pieces were applied, and the signature plaque was fitted. Acura would build lighter NSX models in its home market, but this was the purest NSX sold here.

And now one was surely dead. Chassis #34 had been badly crumpled on the front left corner, with damage to both the suspension and the unibody. The roof and the A-pillar were buckled. Part of the NSX’s engineering genius is its lightweight aluminum monocoque, but aluminum is far harder to repair than steel. The damage looked bad from afar, and was bound to be worse when things were opened up.

Zanardi Edition Acura NSX Joe Lomoriello