Tony Stark’s Untitleable Acura NSX Roadster Is a Bet on Provenance

Most screen cars are sold on a promise: this appeared in the film. Acura’s Avengers NSX Roadster is being sold on something rarer, which is the manufacturer’s own statement that it exists, that its designers drew it, and that it should be preserved as exactly what it is. As of Wednesday, the Cars & Bids listing shows a high bid of $120,000 across 19 bids, with no reserve. The auction closes Saturday, October 31, at 5:00 p.m. EDT.

The buyer of this Acura NSX Roadster will not be able to title it, register it, or drive it on a public road. That is not a footnote. It is the whole story. The bidding is not pricing an NSX; it is pricing a paper trail, a character, and a custody arrangement.

The donor car is the least important part

The roadster began as a 1991 NSX showing 252,200 miles. On its own, that is a chassis a buyer would weigh against our first-generation NSX collector spec sheet and decide whether the money was better spent elsewhere. Here, it is a rolling armature. Acura’s Advanced Design Studio in Los Angeles, under then-creative director Dave Marek, drew the new body. Trans FX of Oxnard, California, built it in hand-laid resin and fiberglass. The styling previews the second-generation NSX Concept shown at the 2012 North American International Auto Show, and the car carries its screen-used “STARK 33” plate. Underneath, the listing describes a 3.0-liter VTEC V6 rated at roughly 270 horsepower, paired with a five-speed manual.

Notice what happens to the usual NSX metrics. In our coverage of the Zanardi Edition and the 261-mile Type S, mileage and originality did the heavy lifting. On this car, mileage is irrelevant and originality means something close to the opposite: the body is original precisely because it is not an NSX body. The seller discloses paint cracks on the C-pillars and describes the bodywork as fragile. That is the honest condition of an object built to be photographed rather than to endure, and a serious buyer should read it that way.

Why this provenance is stronger than most

Screen-car provenance is often contested. Duplicates, stunt cars, studio-built replicas and later recreations blur the record, and the buyer is left to adjudicate. Celebrity provenance, such as Steve McQueen’s Ferrari 275 NART Spider, rests on a person. This car’s rests on an institution. The seller is the company whose designers created it. The lot includes a certificate of authenticity, a signed photograph from the creative director, one key and two fobs, and a Carfax report covering the history up to the point of conversion. Acura kept the car, then returned it to public view at The Quail during Monterey Car Week in August 2025, its first public appearance in more than a decade, according to Acura.

That is a clean chain, and clean chains are what the market pays for. It also means the usual authenticity question, the one that dominates the movie-car category, largely answers itself.

The terms are the product

This is a bill-of-sale transaction under a manufacturer usage agreement, sold as-is, and Acura’s own position in the listing comments is that the intent is to preserve a historically significant movie car as exactly that. One bidder has already asked whether a buyer could be permitted to rebuild the car to roadworthy standards at their own expense. Nothing in the listing suggests that door is open.

The charity structure adds another layer. According to the seller, 100% of the winning bid goes to a charity that the buyer and seller agree on, and American Honda reimburses the buyer’s fee after the sale. In effect, the winner is a donor and a steward at once. Bidders in the comments have asked whether a fair market value will be assigned for tax purposes. That question is unresolved in the listing, and it is one for a tax adviser before bidding, not after. The same goes for questions of resale, display and insurance: the usage agreement is the document that decides what this car can do, and it deserves a lawyer’s read.

Why now, and what the result will tell us

The timing is not accidental. This is the NSX’s 35th anniversary year, Marvel nostalgia is running hot, and the first-generation car has become a serious collector market, as the seven-figure NSX-R result and the Senna NSX heading to RM London have shown. Interest here is real: the listing has drawn more than 84,000 views and over 2,200 watchers, and the bidding climbed from $98,500 to $120,000 in the final days.

But whether $120,000 is cheap or expensive is the wrong frame, because there is no comparable. A one-off, untitleable concept has no market in the ordinary sense. What Saturday’s close can show is narrower and more useful: how much the collector world will pay for a story it is only permitted to keep, not use.

Conventional collector cars are worth what you can do with them. This one is worth what you agree not to. We will follow up with the final result.

Lead image via Cars & Bids