May 2 2025, 04:40 PM, updated 8 months ago
Nissan hasn’t stopped talking to Honda, despite merger talks between the two companies collapsing earlier this year. Both automakers have confirmed next-gen models for their respective halo supercars, and last week, we reported exclusive new details about the new Nissan GT-R’s planned hybrid powertrain and production timeline. Now, there’s reason to consider that the two juggernauts could inform each other’s development.
Last week at the 2025 New York Auto Show, Nissan North America Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer, Ponz Pandikuthira, told The Drive that discussions between the manufacturers are still ongoing. And, without being prompted, the executive also painted a picture of how the next-generation GT-R could be co-developed alongside Honda and Acura’s forthcoming NSX on a shared platform, which he insists is possible even though Acura has stated before that the next NSX will be fully electric.
“Can we do a next-generation NSX and GT-R off the same platform, make the NSX authentic to what it stands for and make a GT-R authentic to what it stands for? So they are not clones?” Pandikuthira asked rhetorically. “Can you co-develop two cars like that? I think we can.”
“The authenticity of this matters,” Pandikuthira continued. “An Acura NSX had a very different origin of what that car was. Super lightweight, all aluminum.” The VP described the supercars’ differences as the NSX being “super precise, lightweight, aerospace execution, whereas a GT-R is a brute, but a sophisticated brute.”
Pandikuthira said that he “would be optimistic” that those two unique interpretations of a flagship supercar could be developed off shared technology. He also noted that Nissan’s new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, was one of the people leading the Honda and Nissan merger negotiations while in his previous role as Nissan’s Chief Planning Officer.
Espinosa has been working with Honda constantly and, according to Pandikuthira, “never stopped talking with Honda.” While Pandikuthira says that discussions of a full-blown merger have indeed ceased, it’s important to remember that the two automakers announced a “strategic partnership” to collaborate on future products last August, months before anyone spoke of them uniting. That separate workstream of joining forces on specific projects is still very much alive, Pandikuthira told us.
“We need collaboration,” Pandikuthira said. “We’re going to need partnerships to deliver vehicles. I think partnerships are going to be a key part of our future.”
Besides Honda, Nissan could forge other alliances that haven’t yet come to light. “Maybe the individual partners are not yet identified, but it makes sense,” Pandikuthira said, broadly referring to partnerships to ensure the auto industry’s survival.
The Nissan North America boss noted that Aston Martin is able to bring certain cars to market “only because they collaborated with Mercedes-Benz,” referencing how the British marque sources engines from AMG. “But they aren’t clones of each other,” Pandikuthira added.
The automotive landscape is changing at a rapid pace, and everyone’s product plans are shifting accordingly. Back in 2021, The Drive broke the news that the Acura NSX would return for a third generation. Since then, the follow-up to the second-gen, hybrid NSX that ended production in 2022 has generally been expected to take the form of a high-performance EV.
However, last summer, former Honda Global Executive Vice President Shinji Aoyama introduced some uncertainty into the model’s future. While Aoyama clearly stated that Honda was preparing an electric sports car, he indicated that the company may choose to give it a new name. “We are going to introduce a sports model, we may not call it NSX but a kind of NSX type of vehicle,” Aoyama told The Drive at the time. The exec also added that this vehicle would not incorporate solid-state battery technology, as it won’t be ready yet.
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