When you are one of the world’s largest and most successful manufacturers of road and racing cars and motorcycles, known for your innovative thinking and unimpeachable engineering and splendid engines, and you want to produce a new model to celebrate a special birthday, what do you come up with?
The S2000, that’s what. You see, the Honda Motor Company was officially formed in 1949 and, to mark the firm’s golden jubilee, it gave the world this low-slung, rear-wheel-drive, two-seat drop-top sports car of prodigious performance, perfect 50:50 weight distribution and impressively low polar moments of inertia.
And there’s more. For starters, there was a wonderful 2.0-litre 16-valve VTEC engine that produced 237bhp at 8300rpm and could rev to 9000rpm. It was a vivid screamer that could potter all day like an elderly professor and then hammer like a racer at the switch of a cam profile. The top speed was 150mph – wonderfully fast – and the 0-60mph time was a delightfully brisk 6.2sec. Chuck in a slick six-speed ’box and a Torsen limited-slip diff and suddenly things looked even juicier.
And, of course, there was yet more eyebrow-arching wonderment: the front/mid-engined layout, the low centre of gravity, the wide track, the aluminium double-wishbone suspension, the rigid frame, the high-geared electric power steering, the special Bridgestone tyres, the digital instruments and even a hood that was impressively quick to lower and erect (from 2002 you could also buy a hard-top GT version). It was all tremendously well thought out and it was brilliant fun on the road – and it was an ’onda, of course, so it’d never go wrong.
And that build quality stands it in good stead today. Many survive, and although those that do will by now have high mileage and been well used, the reports are good, and the accompanying costs of maintenance and repair surprisingly modest. It seems if you buy one now, you can still expect to enjoy many more years of wind-in-the-hair roadstering.
I have to point out at this stage that some thought the on-the-limit handling of the earlier cars too twitchy, and others weren’t convinced by that electric steering, but punting an S2000 of any vintage down a winding road on a sunny day will still have you laughing out loud: it’s a yaw-busting, jaw-aching hoot. Later models had updates designed to dispel those criticisms, with tweaks to the springing and damping rates in 2002 and 2004, and traction control became optional from 2006 onwards and standard from 2008. That 2008 update also adopted the spring and damper rates from the Japanese-market Type S models.
