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The silvia and the 86 are completely different types of investment than a Halo NSX. With a halo car, you're almost expected to lose money based on the cost of R&D itself and the profits you might get from selling the car. The value of the car isn't how well it sells, it's how many potential customers you can attract into your showroom. What I find perplexing, is that most of the costs in R&D for the NSX already seems to have been spent. How much more would it be to make a couple production examples, even if only for display? By axing at a stage this late in it's development, Honda would have wasted a lot of money for nothing more than a brief publicity stunt, and expressing to the public it has limited confidence in it's own economic (if not also technological) capability in the future.
Delaying the NSX might have been a more strategic move, but canceling it outright seems rash and completely counter-productive. Besides, i really think Acura needs a halo car to bring people inside their otherwise uninspiring showrooms.
The Silvia and 86 are meant to make $ on their own. Even in a bad economy, it's not such a terrible hardship to own a 20-30k performance car. This is even more the case, given the sudden drastic drop in gas prices. I also think as boring as Toyota might be, they are more willing to take risks when it comes to offering different products and/or business approaches. They experiment much more than Honda. Honda has come to be notoriously conservative and somewhat inflexible. Personally I haven't been able to appreiciate the Acura's lineup, during the last decade or so. If I people wanted luxury, they'd probably buy bmw, merc, audi, lexus, infinit or even a caddy. If people wanted practicality, why not just get a honda?
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