My third Romance and the one that got away…..literally

Pictures speak louder than words, and this picture says it all:

Can anyone guess what this was??

Instead of guessing here is a picture of what it looked like prior to that fatal day (car fatality, nobody was harmed not even me)

I always like those movies that show the ending first and then discuss how it all happened in a fairy tale like setting. It’s romance for a gear head, our wedding, love story so to speak.

The obsession with the NSX began when I was 14, sitting in the passenger seat of my brother’s car, and this “ferrari” flew by us with a gorgeous exhuast note. I swooned over it’s curves, so balanced, the equivalent hourglass figure of the automotive world. It was at that point when my lust began and my true love for cars came to be.

I did not choose to divulge much into the details of the car, other than the fact that I wanted one so very badly. During my prelude ownership, I found the car to be getting to the point of boredom for me. The desire to get a new toy to play with, something a bit more exotic, a bit more exciting and something that is still highly tunable, was eating away at me every passing day. My search for a new carmance had officially began. At this point I never looked into the price of an NSX as I always thought it would be way out of my price range since I was like most people and looked at new cars, like 350Z costing well into the 40000$ range thinking to myself if that car is that expensive there is no way in hell I can get into even an early year NSX, how wrong I was.

The NSX is a very complex car to say the least, and if someone met me they would be completely educated in every single way when it comes to all the various models of the car during its 1991-2005 production lifespan. I gotta thank all my fellow NSX prime members (www.nsxprime.com) for teaching me all there is to know about the NSX. All I knew at the time (7 years ago) was that I could get into the driver seat of one for under 30000$ and I predicted at the time that their values have bottomed out (needless to say I was right about that one big time).

I made my move, at the age of 20, and bought a White 1992 NSX for 26500 USD with 80000 miles on the clock. Now the the modification bug was in full force with one of the most rewarding cars to customize and tune there ever was. First off I have to take my hat off to the guys at scienceofspeed (www.scienceofspeed.com) and Cody at Lovefab Motorsports (www.lovefab.com) for being the ultimate NSX professionals when it comes to maximizing the performance out of the NSX! These guys truly know what they are doing! To sum up the Performance modifications I did, here is a short clip 🙂 …… Ummmmmm please ignore the mis-shift and my foul language following it.

The performance mods were just the first piece of the puzzle, the car began as a 1992 NA1 NSX therefore since it was a pre 2002 model it started life with pop up head lights. The car looked like this at birth 🙂

I loved the original pop up look but the 2002 NS2 NSX-R was always the super model of the NSX family and was a look I needed to have. North America had never received any NSX-R therefore all us junkies could do in North America to truly re create a left hand drive, hardtop, NSX-R replica was to buy a pre 1995 (hard top, not targa) and all the associated 2002 face lift parts and get them installed. 13000$ and a million headaches later, the job was done from emblems, wheels, steering wheel, headlights, tail lights, rear bumper/valence/diffuser, everything to make the car look like the NSX-R that I dreamed about. It was so beautiful, still to this day one of the most attractive cars on the road today.

Then came that damp morning, mid October, when I had to bring the car to the garage I was storing it in for the winter. I thought to myself since it was the last day I will drive the car until I put it to sleep I may as well give it one more good acceleration before I say goodnight for it’s 6 month hibernation. I learned my lesson that day to never underestimate any vehicle when the roads are damp going high speeds around slight corners, because the slightest imperfection can cause fatal mistakes. This is a serious warning to anyone who wants to act stupid as I did, because that was the luckiest day of my life and take my word for it when I say I could have easily killed myself and many others who were in the area, and there were a lot of people. I also have to really give Honda Kudos for their build quality, since I smashed into a wooden utility pole at over 100 KPH and the car protected me perfectly, not even a scratch. Seriously Honda, thank you for making such safe vehicles.

It’s so true in life that the best lessons learned are the ones where we make the biggest mistakes, those life altering mistakes that make you evolve as a person. This day was one of those days, and from that day forward the respect I had gained for high performance cars grew exponentially. If you want to drive hard, make sure it’s in the safest most remote areas possible, more important away from harming innocent people. If you want to get a thrill and hurt yourself so be it, but don’t be selfish and do something so stupid and put other people at risk like I did. Take it from me, the memory or swerving uncontrollably for 500ft and smashing into a pole is not something you want implanted in your mind as vivid as the day it happened.

Live to drive, but drive as safe a possible and make sure you respect these machines we drive.

This car has and always will be my true love. This lovely man will sum up my feelings towards the NSX:

Live to Drive! But more importantly, stay alive and be safe.

Tom Comegna