With one announcement last week at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Honda surprised auto industry observers in at least two ways.

First, the automaker is resurrecting the rare-but-beloved Acura NSX “supercar.” And second, the new NSX will be designed and built in Ohio, not Japan, where the model’s previous iteration was built from 1990 to 2005.

Already, preliminary development work for the NSX has been handed off from Japan to Honda’s Center of Research and Development in Raymond, Ohio, about 140 miles northeast of Dayton, a Honda spokesman said.

“That resulted in a standing ovation among the media,” said Ron Lietzke, a spokesman for Honda in Ohio. “They were really anticipating this product.”

“The fact that it’s going to be produced here in Central Ohio was also a surprise,” Lietzke said.

Matt DeLorenzo, editor in chief of Road & Track magazine, agreed. “The big surprise to me was the fact that the car is going to be built in Ohio.”

Kim Korth, president of Grand Rapids., Mich.-based industrial consultant IRN Inc., said the news is “a huge compliment to the state of Ohio. Huge.”

Industry observers and NSX fans say the decision to bring the NSX back and assemble it in Ohio makes sense. They point to Honda’s three decades of manufacturing experience here. The automaker has been building cars in Ohio since 1982 and can build up to 680,000 passenger cars and light at plants in Marysville and East Liberty.

Lietzke won’t say exactly where the NSX plant will be built.

Observers say economic conditions paved the way for the plan.

“This is an example of the yen being such a difficult thing for (Japanese) automakers,” said Steve Finlay, a senior editor for Ward’s Auto, a website and magazine focused on the auto industry.

The U.S. dollar is low against the Japanese yen, which means it’s less expensive for Japanese automakers like Honda to build in the United States than in Japan. A car built in the U.S. will then be comparatively less expensive for U.S. consumers.

“If you’re doing it from scratch, you might as well do it here,” Finlay said.

Expect to see more foreign automakers building plants in the U.S., said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research. Toyota recently opened a mothballed plant in Tupelo, Miss.; Volkswagen has opened a plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Hyundai is considering another U.S. plant, he said.

That’s due to the weakening dollar and increasingly flexible and productive U.S. work forces and plants, Cole said. New plants will be able to quickly switch to new models as automakers deem necessary, he said.

“We (the U.S.) have become an export platform partly because of the dollar and partly because of productivity,” Cole said.

IRN’s Korth said she expects automakers outside America to make a “new commitment” to American manufacturing every year or two for the foreseeable future if current conditions persist.

Honda employs about 13,500 Ohioans, including about 1,300 from the Dayton area and 1,400 from Clark and Champaign counties.

“Honda is very happy with the Ohio work force,” Cole said. “They have had a lot of success there.”

Honda has a reputation for making moves deliberately and carefully. Lietzke said the company has research that shows buyers are ready for the NSX.

Brian Ulrage, a Maineville, Ohio resident and Midwest representative for the NSX Club of America, says he has certainly been waiting for a new version of the car. Ulrage, owner of Source 1 Automotive auto shop in Goshen, owns three NSXs and said he will be opening his wallet for the new version.

Like other NSX enthusiasts, he praises the model’s performance and low stance, with its pushed-forward cockpit and body lines.

“You sit in them like it’s a fighter jet,” Ulrage said. “I’ll definitely be getting one of them.”

In his view, the NSX forced sports car makers like Porsche and Ferrari to make more durable models at relatively lower prices.

“It really was an accessible exotic,” said Road & Track’s DeLorenzo. “What I mean by that is people found it easier to drive.”

Said Finlay, the Ward Auto’s editor, “It should be a sweet car.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews .com.