All these original Acura emblems and logos were supposed to be accounted for and immediately destroyed. A handful made them out.
A pair of rare, Acura emblems, unlike the ones you see on all Acura cars today, popped up on eBay with a $2,000 starting bid. At first glance they don’t look any different from regular Acura logos until you realize it’s missing a crossbar.
Check out a handful of photos from the eBay bid below.
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King Motorsports does an excellent job of telling the story behind these first emblems but the Tl;DR is that this original design logo was given the stamp of approval for production without consulting Honda’s Founder, Soichiro Honda himself.
Allegedly 5,000 of these rogue logos were stamped with 309 of them affixed to NSXs headed for American shores.
These two are a part of a first batch of logos rejected by Honda’s founder which resulted in a massive last-minute redesign of the Acura emblem and a recall of all Acura emblems without a crossbar. All emblems were supposed to be accounted for and destroyed but a few rebellious employees kept a handful for posterity’s sake and apparently to resell 31 years later.
While the Acura logo today is supposed to represent a set of calipers for measurements, a nod to precision crafted performance, according to King Motorsports,
“Honda San” firmly suggested the vertical goal posts be joined by a small horizontal bar. The bar, he reasoned, made the design A (for Acura) and an H (for Honda) — and his was the final word.
According to this eBay seller,
You are bidding on the The ORIGINAL design logo in perfect condition, and a second emblem which was drilled and removed from a pre-launch 1991 Acura NSX. You are getting two emblems – both not available anywhere else in the world!
It’s a cool story and a piece of unobtainium but if it’s worth $2,000 is yet to be known. As of this writing, the auction’s been up for three days with zero bids and eight people watching.
This is a case where the story is just as cool as the item itself and, as long as the story is verifiable, having the logos is a cool conversation piece, at best.
If you’re a diehard Acura fan with all the disposable income, that’s a different story. $2,000 is a small price to pay for rare parts no one can have.
I’d love to see Acura buy these back and keep them in their personal archives instead of destroying them. Maybe one of their reps is one of the eight watching.
And how wild would it be if an NSX owner bought these two and put them on their own NSX. That’s one way to set your NSX apart at an import meet.
