A 1991 Honda NSX personally used by Ayrton Senna – the very car he was famously photographed washing with a garden hose – is heading to auction with RM Sotheby’s carrying an estimate of £500,000-800,000. The Formula Red example will cross the block in RM’s London sale on 31 October 2026.
Chassis T000233 was one of three NSXs the Japanese manufacturer placed at Senna’s disposal in 1991. In addition to that famous photograph, the car also appeared in the 1992 documentary Ayrton Senna: Racing Is In My Blood.
Registered in Portugal and stored in Lisbon, T000233 was delivered to Senna each time he flew in to his property at the Quinta do Lago resort. The Brazilian drove the car to the 1991 Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril, where he finished second behind Riccdevelardo Patrese’s Williams.
Senna was personally involved in the NSX’s development and he’s reported to have deemed the chassis of an early prototype to have been ‘a little fragile.’ Honda subsequently stiffened the structure by around 50 percent and refined the double-wishbone suspension geometry.
Senna was killed at the San Marino Grand Prix in May 1994. Portuguese records accompanying the car show that it was registered to Laboa Etablissement in Lisbon in the following February. A Honda fax confirming the car’s Senna connection confirms that by September 1997, the car was in the care of the marque’s Nipomotor dealership.
It then passed to the owner of Faro-based MSCAR Comércio de Automóveis in November 2009, then to Robert McFagan in 2013, who had the NSX transported to the UK and registered for road use in May 2016.
In 2019 the NSX returned to Imola to mark 25 years since Senna’s fatal crash at Tamburello. It was driven around the Italian circuit by Minardi founder Giancarlo Minardi. T000233’s current owner acquired it in Nagoya, Japan, in 2024.
View the listing here.
