The NSX owned by Ayrton Senna is now on the used car market

A Honda NSX, once the private car of legendary Formula One pilot Ayrton Senna, has appeared on the used car market at Auto Trader, the UK’s largest car market. The NSX, which retains its original condition well, is priced at GBP 500,000. This is a very valuable car that was featured in the film ‘Racing Is in My Blood’.

F1 pilots attracted female fans as well as men

There was a time when office workers could talk about F1 in their lunchtime chit-chat. Racing drivers, known as F1 pilots at the time, attracted not only male but also female fans, with good-looking men who achieved good results also attracting attention. At the time, the race was mainly held in Europe and was known as the “F1 circus”, no doubt because the F1 pilots were manipulating the cars like circus acrobats.

Formula One pilots were like TV personalities, idols, and heroes. Former F1 driver Jean Alesi’s wife was a Japanese actress who was considered a national beauty, and the wife of a motoring journalist known for his habitual pit reports was also an actress, albeit separated. Even among the general public, who were not racing fans, F1 was a hot topic.

In the days when F1 was such a major motorsport, it was commonplace to broadcast on terrestrial television with big sponsors. There are still many fans of the legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna, who died an untimely death during the San Marino Grand Prix on 1 May 1994.

Delivered while Senna was in Portugal

The Honda NSX, which Senna owned as his private car, was offered for sale on 23 April 2024 from Auto Trader, the UK’s largest car market, for the astonishing price of £500,000. In the public eye, when a rare car owned by a celebrity falls into the hands of the next user, it can fetch a significant premium for its history of celebrity ownership in addition to its market price.

Ayrton Senna won 41 Grand Prix podiums in the late 1980s and early 1990s and dominated the world with McLaren. In his native Brazil, he is regarded as a national hero and was even made into a film in Racing Is in My Blood, in which the NSX also appears.

The current owner of Senna’s NSX is Robert McFagan, who found it during a trip to Portugal; in 2019, 25 years after Senna’s accident, it was taken to the Imola circuit in Italy, where Giancarlo Minardi drove and showed it to Senna’s fans.

There’s not much to say about the NSX now, but the car joined the ranks of exotic cars as a Japanese mid-ship supercar. Registered in 1991, it has just over 60,000 km on the odometer. Nowadays, even original NSXs are rare, and if there is a deal to be had, it must be expensive, and remain in good original condition. There is no doubt that anyone wishing to buy it is a Senna fan.

translated by DeepL