Honda spent too much time and money developing/engineering 2017 NSX, they also spent good amount of money to convert a facility to virtually hand build the cars by 20+ years experienced technicians.
They are making this car probably for marketing/advertising purpose. They may get some good press to hopefully get someone into Acura showroom to buy 1 of their other vehicles.
Quote:
When Honda announced it was going to build its NSX supercar in Ohio instead of Japan, it caught everybody in the industry by surprise. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Now Honda has a supercar production facility in rural Ohio that would be the envy of any Formula One team.
Honda benchmarked the assembly operations at Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, and Bentley before work began on its facility.
This is a low-volume facility with production targeted at only eight to ten cars a day. The plant runs four days a week with one ten-hour shift.
Quote:
Each technician on the line has over 20 years of manufacturing experience.
But even with all this attention to detail there clearly is a steep learning curve. So far the plant has built 160 NSXs to test out the assembly process, a very high number of pre-production prototypes. Some of them will be used as test cars for the media and some will be used as demo cars at dealerships, but the rest will be crushed and scrapped.
While there are some welding and painting robots in the plant, the NSX is essentially a hand-built car. Every single nut, bolt and screw – all 547 of them – are hand started to make sure none of them are cross threaded. And there is no moving assembly line. Each car is pushed to the next station by hand.
Quote:
The engine comes from Honda's nearby engine plant in the city of Anna, where six master builders and two technicians make each one by hand. Every master builder has at least 24 years of experience and has been to Japan twice to learn how to do the builds at Honda's R&D center there.
The tool chests they use are made out of a special plastic that does not scratch or scrape, so that plastic shavings do not contaminate the machined parts. Each tool chest is washed after every engine is completed. Honda picked up this trick from its passenger jet assembly operations.
Quote:
It takes five to six hours to assemble one engine versus the 30 seconds that it takes for one of Honda's mass-production engines to pop off the line. One reason it takes so long is that they use shims to adjust the valves, and they have to measure the clearance of each valve with a special tool calibrated to micron accuracy. They also use hand wipes to clean every surface that gets a gasket or sealer. The cure time for the sealer alone can take three hours.
Though the engine is assembled in Ohio, all the major components are sourced from Europe. The block and the head are cast by Granger & Worral in the UK, which by the way does the castings for all the Formula One engines (except, ironically enough, for Honda's F1 engine). Other castings come from Fonderia Gatelli in Italy. All the machining for the head and block are done by Cosworth in the UK.
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/04/12/acura-nsx-honda-ohio-factory-autoline-video/
They are making this car probably for marketing/advertising purpose. They may get some good press to hopefully get someone into Acura showroom to buy 1 of their other vehicles.
Quote:
When Honda announced it was going to build its NSX supercar in Ohio instead of Japan, it caught everybody in the industry by surprise. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Now Honda has a supercar production facility in rural Ohio that would be the envy of any Formula One team.
Honda benchmarked the assembly operations at Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, and Bentley before work began on its facility.
This is a low-volume facility with production targeted at only eight to ten cars a day. The plant runs four days a week with one ten-hour shift.
Quote:
Each technician on the line has over 20 years of manufacturing experience.
But even with all this attention to detail there clearly is a steep learning curve. So far the plant has built 160 NSXs to test out the assembly process, a very high number of pre-production prototypes. Some of them will be used as test cars for the media and some will be used as demo cars at dealerships, but the rest will be crushed and scrapped.
While there are some welding and painting robots in the plant, the NSX is essentially a hand-built car. Every single nut, bolt and screw – all 547 of them – are hand started to make sure none of them are cross threaded. And there is no moving assembly line. Each car is pushed to the next station by hand.
Quote:
The engine comes from Honda's nearby engine plant in the city of Anna, where six master builders and two technicians make each one by hand. Every master builder has at least 24 years of experience and has been to Japan twice to learn how to do the builds at Honda's R&D center there.
The tool chests they use are made out of a special plastic that does not scratch or scrape, so that plastic shavings do not contaminate the machined parts. Each tool chest is washed after every engine is completed. Honda picked up this trick from its passenger jet assembly operations.
Quote:
It takes five to six hours to assemble one engine versus the 30 seconds that it takes for one of Honda's mass-production engines to pop off the line. One reason it takes so long is that they use shims to adjust the valves, and they have to measure the clearance of each valve with a special tool calibrated to micron accuracy. They also use hand wipes to clean every surface that gets a gasket or sealer. The cure time for the sealer alone can take three hours.
Though the engine is assembled in Ohio, all the major components are sourced from Europe. The block and the head are cast by Granger & Worral in the UK, which by the way does the castings for all the Formula One engines (except, ironically enough, for Honda's F1 engine). Other castings come from Fonderia Gatelli in Italy. All the machining for the head and block are done by Cosworth in the UK.
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/04/12/acura-nsx-honda-ohio-factory-autoline-video/