After years of build-up, the Acura NSX is set to be built.
Honda Motor Co. is wrapping up more than a year of test runs at its new Marysville assembly plant, dubbed the Performance Manufacturing Center, and is set to begin production for buyers of the supercar – which starts at $156,000.
As if the design requirements for the years-in-the-works car alone weren’t enough for Honda, the automaker also had to design and build a specialized facility to do that work. The company converted a 200,000-square-foot building that had been used by a supplier and as an export center for Accord and Civic parts shipped out to other markets.
It has assembled more than 150 NSXs since summer 2015 at the Performance Manufacturing Center as it both perfected the vehicle and the processes to build it.
The plant's staff of 100 is expected to build 800 of the hand-crafted cars in its first year. Acura began taking U.S. customer orders last month. International sales haven’t opened yet, but the company expects to ship the NSX to 60 countries once at full capacity.
“It’s a big day in the history of Honda’s operations in Ohio,” Tom Shoupe, Honda of America Manufacturing Inc. executive vice president, said on a recent tour of the operation.
Take a look inside the Performance Manufacturing Center in the attached slideshow.
The $70 million facility is something to see – bright and white and nothing like a mass assembly operation.
Andy Stockton, manufacturing technology and new model production project leader, said the plant and its operations, which includes a little automation and a lot of hands-on work, were benchmarked on a number of other low-volume, high-quality operations including Ferrari, Audi, Lamborghini and McLaren.
It even looked outside autos to the likes of truck-maker Kenworth and even Sutphen Corp., which builds fire trucks right down Route 33 near Dublin.
Matt DeLorenzo, managing editor of Kelley Blue Book, said features like the Quality Confirmation room and the paint departments made the biggest impression on him.
“It’s very visible and central to their philosophy,” he said.
He did notice several differences from what Honda is doing compared with the likes of Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, AMG, Porsche, Bentley.
“The plant is more of a final assembly plant,” DeLorenzo said.
Some of those European manufacturers do everything under one roof, while engines, seats and exterior panels for the NSX come from outside the plant.
“At Aston Martin you’ll see them stitching leather and building seats. You see them assembling instrument panels,” he said. “This facility is a lot more like a race shop.”
Sam Abuelsamid, senior transportation analyst with Boulder, Colorado-based Navigant Research, said Honda is automating the parts of the process that make sense like those exterior pieces.
He said that hand-building not only adds that customized/bespoke quality, but there’s also a financial argument. Less automation means it’s easier to slow the line and reshuffle staff if sales aren’t as expected.
“Automation is expensive,” he said. “You want to keep that to a minimum in case volumes fluctuate.”
Honda’s hands-on approach extends 50 miles to the west too, where at the Anna Engine Plant, the automaker carved out a 4,000-square-foot space in the 2.4 million-square-foot facility for NSX engine assembly. A team of 16, including six “master builders” who do much of the hands-on construction, work on up to four engines at a time in a process that takes hours.
The nine-gear transmission is built in Japan.
“That’s what made sense,” said Engine Quality Leader Jim Mankin, of the decision to import the transmission. “The best technology and resources were there. It’s the same rationale we used to pick Anna.”
The Performance Manufacturing Center has a purpose beyond just building the NSX.
Acura NSX Engineering Large Project Leader Clement D’Souza said the plant also will be a “crucible for technology,” working as a proving ground for tools and techniques that could have use in Honda’s mass production processes.
Stockton said the special lights used to spot paint imperfections already are in use at East Liberty. The visual operations system of computers showing workers the tasks that need completed and data about the vehicle, could be used in some way at a larger scale. He also singled out the aluminum MIG welding and the zirconium phosphate frame treatment as things that could apply to mass products.
D’Souza said the Acura MDX frame will be tested with that treatment at the Performance Manufacturing Center at some point.
The Acura NSX arrives in time for Acura’s 30th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the luxury brand’s first U.S. assembled car — the CL coupe.
Shoupe said more than 50 percent of the Acuras sold in the U.S. are now built here, including the TLX and ILX, both made in Marysville, and the RDX, which is built in East Liberty. Some MDX production will begin there as well next year.