Honda Redraws the Nazca Lines With the NSX in California

It’s the company’s way of showcasing the NSX’s cornering abilities

The Nazca Lines in Peru are some the most iconic and mysterious marks left by ancient civilizations on the surface of our planet.

The famous "Hummingbird" Nazca Desert geoglyph is instantly recognizable all over the world, which is why Honda staged a PR stunt involving the legendary drawing. Using its all-new NSX hybrid supercar and advanced GPS visualization equipment, Honda has recreated the massive artwork on a surface covering 601,195 square meters in the El Mirage salt flats in California.

Created between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., the original "Hummingbird" is approximately 93 meters (305 ft) long while Honda's recreation is more than 10 times the size, measuring 965 meters (3,166 ft) end to end.

Honda used a high-resolution image of the Nazca Lines to trace and digitize the Hummingbird, producing a set of GPS coordinates accurate to within three meters. With more than 30 hairpin turns, precision cornering was important, which explains why Honda chose the NSX.

The car's Sport Hybrid SH-AWD (Super Handling All-Wheel Drive) technology, with two electric motors driving the front axle, allowed the NSX to execute very tight turns. The inner wheel slows while the outer wheel gets more drive to accelerate through hairpins.

Recreating the geoglyph required a massive effort from a joint Japan-U.S. Honda team, which used high-accuracy GPS mapping and tracking, as well as a head-mounted display to enable the NSX driver to follow the design precisely.

Watch the video to learn if the NSX is as talented at drawing as it is at going fast around a circuit.