Honda Chose the Hard Way on Purpose

The engine was finished, and the review was polite. Honda's own corporate history records the evaluation of the prototype F20C motor: an honor student, but no flair. The team under project leader Yoshiaki Akimoto had set out for 240 PS (about 237 hp), but ran into America's new Low Emission Vehicle rules, which forced the target down to 220 PS (about 217 hp); the team squeezed 225 (about 222 hp) out of it.

Then the president asked how the engine was coming along. Nobuhiko Kawamoto ran Honda from 1990 to 1998, and before that he had designed racing engines, served as head mechanic on the Brabham-Honda Formula 2 team that won 11 of 12 races in 1966, and played a central part in Honda's Formula 1 program in the 1980s and 1990s. He was told 225. His answer, in Honda's own account, was a hurdle set deliberately too high to clear: make it an engine that revs to a round 10,000.

Akimoto took that to his boss, engine development leader Yutaka Otobe, and the two of them went over it again and again. Otobe asked how they were going to turn 10,000. Akimoto said they could do it with 1.7 liters. For a car expected to weigh around 1,200 kg (about 2,650 lb), 1.7 liters was too little engine.

"Then let's get him to accept 9,000 rpm and a round 250 PS," Otobe said. Somehow he did. Two hundred fifty PS is about 247 hp, and from two liters it comes to 125 PS per liter (about 123 hp per liter), which in the mid-1990s was a racing-engine figure. Akimoto, who now had to deliver it, privately figured the thing would probably never make 250. But Honda's team wanted to see a summit no one had seen yet, so they got to work.

Otobe told the story for years afterward, and every time he told it outside the company he mentioned only the horsepower half, which is why the anecdote that circulates is about 250 and never about the 10,000.

So the number on the S2000's tachometer, the one the car has been known for since April 1999, was a compromise between a president who wanted 10,000 and two engineers who suspected 9,000 was already past them.

Why did Honda build the S2000 around a 9,000 rpm engine when a turbocharger was the simpler route to the same power, and what did the hard way earn them?

Honda answered the first half in its 1999 European press kit: "Turbocharging would have been the simplest way to boost power, but Honda chose instead to enable the engine to run at higher revs; more power can be extracted at high engine speeds since more revs mean more power strokes. However, such an approach means that the problem of higher frictional losses and increased stress on components has to be addressed".

Honda's developers said it in plainer words two years later. In a roundtable the company published in 2001 for the car's second anniversary, one of the S2000's senior developers described hearing the 250 PS figure for the first time. He had been assuming about 200. Adding 50 PS to that, he said, "does not even register on a computer simulation. It is a level beyond mass-production common sense. Normally the answer is impossible unless you use a turbo. But our engineers hate turbos".

Honda never hid the choice behind the number. The September 1998 prototype press kit puts "naturally aspirated" in its opening description of the engine, next to more than 120 PS per liter and LEV compliance. Honda's press kit introduced the prototype on the company's fiftieth birthday as "the one car that speaks most passionately of Honda's challenge in the car-making to come".

Honda chose the hard way on purpose, and then chose a harder one. It built its fiftieth-anniversary message to the world as a naturally aspirated two-liter four-cylinder with no boost, no balancer shafts and no easy torque, paid for it in melted test engines and a missed birthday, and got back a $32,000 roadster that beat $50,000 Germans on a racetrack and an engine its own development leader says will never be built again. The hard way is the whole ethos of the S2000.

Honda's first cars went on display at the October 1962 Tokyo show, fourteen years into the company's life, while it was still a motorcycle maker to most of the world; the S500 went on sale a year later. They were the S360 and the S500, "S" for sports, front engine, rear drive. The S360's 360 cc four-cylinder made 33 PS (about 33 hp) at 9,000 rpm on a roller-bearing crankshaft, with twin overhead cams and one Keihin carburetor per cylinder, which Honda's own kit calls "a legacy of Honda's racing motorcycles". On early cars the rev counter read to 14,000 rpm, and the S360 itself never reached full production.

The S800 followed at the 1965 Tokyo Motor Show: 791 cc, 71 PS (about 70 hp) at 8,000 rpm, "revving safely to 10,000 rpm," and in Honda's own arithmetic, "that equated to 90 PS per litre". Ninety PS per liter, in 1965, on low-octane fuel, in a car Honda says was good for about 100 mph.

When Honda showed the SSM, for Sports Study Model, in October 1995, it described the car as born of the company's feeling for sports cars "carried down continuously from the S500". When the production car launched, Honda Europe drew the line all the way back to the founder: Soichiro Honda "didn't want to build a car like everyone else's," the kit says, so Uehara and his team "chose to seek new approaches". By Honda's count the S2000 was its first front-engine, rear-drive car in 34 years, measured from the S800's 1965 debut.

The escalation in between was Honda racing itself. The Integra Type R's 1.8 made 105.7 PS per liter; the Japan-only Civic Type R's 1.6 made 115.6, about 104 and 114 hp per liter. Both are named in the 1999 kit as the benchmarks the F20C beat. The F20C was the next iteration in a storied history of excellent motors, but the only one with a rear-drive car underneath it.

Honda said in its own voice at launch that the high-rev habit was the company itself. The S2000 Philosophy pages on the 1999 Japanese site start with the 1954 declaration for the Isle of Man TT. They move on to the 1961 sweep of first through fifth in both the 125 cc and 250 cc classes, "with high-revving, high-output engines, precise and full of toughness." Then comes the line "technically new things. Things other people don't do." And then: "And now Honda's dream arrives at a single sports car". The same pages describe Soichiro Honda as a man who threw wrenches in protest at imitation, and who put twin camshafts into a light truck in 1963. Honda's 2023 corporate history adds the view from inside the building: "inside the company there was an image that high-revving is what makes an engine Honda-like".

Car and Driver's October 1999 comparison broke the magazine's own rule against price spreads above $10,000 and ran an $18,000 spread, because nothing near the Honda's price could compete; the six-speed Miata at $27,325 was waved off as a car the S2000 would eat for lunch. The field it assembled instead: S2000, $32,000 by Honda's pre-launch estimate; BMW M Roadster, $43,706; Mercedes-Benz SLK, $40,871; Porsche Boxster 2.5, $42,111. Once cars were on sale, MotorWeek printed $32,415 for the Honda, and $50,695 for a base Boxster S, which put the S2000 at only 64 percent of the Porsche's sticker.

When production ended in 2009, Honda published a page it called "Memories of S2000," with a development-team credit list and a signed message from each of four people: Shigeru Uehara as LPL, the Large Project Leader; Yutaka Otobe on the engine; Ryoji Tsukamoto on the chassis; Daisuke Sawai on design. Uehara joined Honda R&D in 1971, led the mid-ship research project from 1985 and brought out the NSX as LPL in 1990. Otobe joined in 1975, worked on PGM-FI fuel injection, and from 1988 developed Formula 1 engines. Two more names come from Honda's 2023 corporate history and a 2023 developers' talk at the Honda Collection Hall: Yoshiaki Akimoto, the F20C's project leader; and Karaki, the power unit development leader.

Karaki described the brief that came down from above. "Achieve unprecedented output and environmental compliance together, and on the occasion of the founding 50th, send it out to the whole world as Honda's message". And: "a big theme came down to us: build an engine no one could imitate, one that would make the world gasp". His concept statement had "naturally aspirated" written inside it: the world's highest output for a two-liter naturally aspirated engine, instant throttle response, worldwide LEV compliance, and a package small enough to sit behind the front axle. Anyone could justify putting a turbo on the motor to achieve power. Reading Karaki's brief, I think Honda understood that 125 PS per liter without one was something a rival could admire but could not order.

Otobe's own account starts in the same place. On being handed the engine, his first thought "was that I wanted to give it an engine worthy of Honda's 50th-anniversary commemorative car, with an appeal and a value you could get only by owning this car". He chased response as hard as output: "we pursued not only output but response, thoroughly," down to lightening the transmission and stiffening the driveshafts. The first time he drove the prototype in Europe, he says, he was certain the concept had been right. Response is the one quality a turbocharger of 1999 could least deliver.

He also says what it cost. "I can say this now: I lost count of how many test engines we destroyed". Combustion chamber temperatures climbing until the pistons melted was, in his words, within expectations. His verdict, ten years on: "I don't think a naturally aspirated production engine making output like that will ever be developed again".

Uehara was answering a car he had driven. At the S2000's tenth-anniversary gathering in Trento in April 2009, he told the European owners that 38 years earlier, just after joining Honda, he had admired the S800 and driven one himself: "the high revving engine, the secure handling, the sense of freedom of an open car". Takumi Yoshida, a Car Graphic veteran and S800 racer writing on Honda's own site, recalls Uehara telling him he had been devoted to the 1960s Honda Sports, and calls the F20C "truly the descendant of the S800".

"We decided the S2000's legal domicile was the racetrack," Uehara wrote in 2009, and he signed off with "The S2000 is one of a kind, and solitary". The whole project, in his telling, was a challenge to the conventional wisdom that a real sports car could not be built on an open body.

Many of the engine team had come from Honda's Formula 1 engine program and its CART program, the 1999 kit says, and it names two specific transfers: valve-spring material from CART, and a low-friction bearing plating adapted from F1.

Sawai, who designed both the SSM and the production car, says the design looked weak against Europe's landscapes during testing, so the team redid it. It was "like doing a full model change mid-development. Even for Honda, that was an impossible way to develop a car". The anonymous 2001 roundtable describes where that kind of thing was allowed to happen: a literal partition in the design studio, with sports-car design done on the far side of it "as the designers' hobby work," which is where the SSM grew up.

Ryoji Tsukamoto, who led body development and later stood in as project leader, described the order from management at a developers' talk at the Honda Collection Hall in April 2023. Build a commemorative model for the founding fiftieth, a car in which a new joy of driving could be discovered and which showed Honda's commitment; a car to raise Honda's sports image worldwide going into the 21st century; and a car sports-car fans could afford. A second instruction followed: because the car would stand for Honda's direction in the new century, the team was to take its time and verify for itself, by Honda's three-actuals principle of going to the place, seeing the thing and knowing the facts.

The affordability clause is where the engine's displacement came from. Honda's September 1998 prototype kit says the company "chose the 2-liter displacement from the wish that many people could enjoy a real sports car closer to hand", and the April 1999 Fact Book repeats it: Honda "chose the familiar 2-liter class and pursued ease of handling and stability as well". The engine size was settled by who was supposed to be able to buy the car, before anyone had put a power figure on it. With the displacement fixed and a turbo unwanted, the only option was to raise the tachometer.

The car that first carried the idea in public had a different engine altogether. The SSM appeared at the 31st Tokyo Motor Show in October 1995 with a two-liter inline five-cylinder derived from the Inspire's G-series, mounted behind the front axle, making over 200 PS (about 197 hp), and driving the rear wheels through a sequential electric-select five-speed automatic; at 3,985 mm long, about 157 inches, it fit inside Japan's compact size class. The concept had a five-cylinder, "but it was decided to switch to 4-cylinders, using the engine currently under development".

That engine had been in advance development since 1994 as a new inline four-cylinder architecture, with a 94 mm bore pitch chosen so one block family could stretch to 2.4 liters; the K-series and the F20C both descend from it. It was the engine whose first prototype was called an honor student with no flair, and the one Kawamoto answered with a round 10,000. Tsukamoto's telling of the same escalation puts it at an executive meeting, a management review at which the target went from 240 to 250 PS, and he calls it "a very tough hurdle". So the S2000's engine began life as a sensible shared-architecture four-cylinder, and got dared into something else.

Honda showed the prototype on September 24th, 1998, fifty years to the day after its founding, and the press kit opened on the anniversary. Between the SSM and that prototype came three design stages, each recognizably related to the concept, and one idea Honda dropped along the way: the SSM's split cockpit, with a fixed spar running from the cowl to the rear deck between driver and passenger.

Development took almost three years, longer than a typical Honda of the period, and ran out of Honda R&D's Wako and Tochigi centers. The part Uehara remembered most was Europe. Prototypes went there for more than 20,000 miles of testing, a program Uehara named the Value Study, run through Switzerland, Germany, Britain and France. Otobe's certainty about the engine came from his first drive of the prototype on that program. So did the delay: Uehara says the thoroughness of the European running put development six months behind, and a car planned for Honda's fiftieth year in 1998 went on sale in 1999.

The price target survived the delay. Honda's engineers told Motor Trend that a glass rear window and an automatic tonneau cover "would've been difficult to incorporate" while keeping the car's rigidity up and the retail price at $30,000. The plastic rear window that owners complained about was another compromise Honda made on purpose.

Honda built the car at the Takanezawa plant in Tochigi. Kazuhiko Tsunoda, chief engineer of the Insight, described it on the record in August 2000 as a plant established to produce the NSX and by then also building the S2000 and the Insight, "a plant dedicated to the production of special low volume products". Honda Europe described the build as a series of work stations, each run by a team, under the same build process as the NSX. The NSX and the Insight were aluminum cars; the S2000 was steel, with an aluminum hood. Tsunoda says Honda modified Takanezawa's weld and paint operations so aluminum and steel bodies could run through the same facility, and that the higher volumes of the S2000 and the Insight forced the plant to add equipment. A $32,000 Honda went together under the process that built the NSX, and it made the NSX's plant grow to fit it.

Every production engine has a rev limiter, and moving it is a software change. What the limiter protects is a set of parts sized for the speeds below it. Push a four-cylinder designed for 6,500 rpm to 9,000 and three things happen at once. The pistons cover the same stroke in less time, so the force needed to stop and reverse them at each end climbs steeply. The valves have less time to open and close, so the springs fall behind the cam and the valve floats into the path of the piston. And friction in every bearing and on every cam lobe rises with speed, taking power away in the range where the extra power was supposed to appear. More revs mean more power strokes, and then "the problem of higher frictional losses and increased stress on components has to be addressed".

Honda's own history puts a number on the zone the team entered: a mean piston speed of 25.2 meters per second at 9,000 rpm, about 4,960 feet per minute. Honda calls it "an unknown world far beyond the F1 engines of the day". At that engine speed each piston stops and reverses direction 300 times a second. The stroke was long for the bore because the 94 mm bore pitch was fixed by the shared block family, which is part of why the piston speed landed where it did.

Honda's first answers were subtractions. A four-cylinder, because it could sit farther back in the bay and weighed less than a V6. No balancer shafts, because their friction would have cost revs and output, so Honda kept the vibration to keep the power. The roundtable developer describes how the 50 PS was found once the target was set: "a patient accumulation of small technical gains". Compression was raised for thermal efficiency, intake and exhaust resistance was shaved bit by bit, oil that had gone up to the head routed back down the sides so it landed nowhere near the crankshaft and counterweight. Friction was cut a little at a time.

Then the bench. Uehara said that past 8,000 rpm "new noise and vibration patterns were discovered". Honda's history says the engine broke every time it ran on the test stand. Valves struck pistons. Cast pistons shattered and destroyed the evidence of what had failed first; forged pistons stayed in one piece and let the team see the valvetrain failing at the same moment. Piston sensors accurate to microns and analysis software the team wrote itself showed the piston moving "in the direction opposite to conventional wisdom" above 8,800 rpm, so Honda reversed the piston-pin offset.

The hardware that came out of it reads as a list of friction removed and mass taken away, and the valvetrain got most of the attention. Roller-type coaxial VTEC rocker arms, the first time Honda put rollers on a DOHC VTEC, with the locking pin built into the roller; Honda claimed roughly 70 percent less valvetrain friction. The rockers were formed by metal injection molding in a single step, a world first for the application by Honda's account. The camshafts are hollow and carry their own oil. A small silent chain drives an idler and scissor gears drive the cams from there. The gear drive lets the cams sit close together, which narrows the included valve angle to 51 degrees. This shrinks the combustion chamber, which is part of how the engine tolerates 11:1 compression.

The block and the parts inside it got the rest. The cylinder liners are fiber-reinforced metal, carbon and alumina fibers cast into the aluminum block at least 0.5 mm thick, borrowed from the NSX's 3.2-liter V6, and their heat dispersion is the other part of how 11:1 survives. The pistons are forged aluminum, the first in a Honda production car engine. The rods are carburized forged steel with nut-less bolts, chosen partly so the crankcase could be smaller. The whole thing weighs 326 lb; roughly 10 percent less than the Prelude's engine.

Every part that moves up and down got lighter, every part that rubs got a roller or a coating, and the head got tighter so the mixture could be squeezed harder without detonating.

The compression ratio is where boost would have started taking things back. The American F20C ran 11.0:1; the Japanese car ran 11.7:1. A turbocharger or supercharger packs more air into the cylinder, and at high compression that charge detonates, so a boosted engine is built with less squeeze. The only S2000 supercharger kit ever granted a California Air Resources Board Executive Order, Comptech's, is limited to 6 psi on the stock pistons and the stock 11.0:1 compression; Motor Trend drove that car in 2001, a Paxton Novi 1000 blowing 6 psi, with Comptech claiming 100 more horsepower. When Power House Amuse set out to build a 550 hp turbocharged F20C for its GT1 project, it stroked the bottom end and dropped compression to 8.8:1. Those 2.2 points of compression are the distance between the engine Honda built and the engine a turbo wants, and they are also the difference in how the throttle answers at 4,000 rpm.

The VTEC changeover sits at 5,850 rpm in Honda's engineering copy for both the American and European cars. The engine cuts fuel at 9,000 rpm, and Honda called 9,000 the redline in its press kits in two markets.

Peak torque is 153 lb-ft, and it arrives at 7,500 rpm. Honda put its own number on the low end in the text introducing the 2004 car: useful power for hard acceleration on the new engine began at about 3,000 rpm, "compared to about 6000 rpm on the 2000 - 2003 models". Motor Trend's launch test says what the compromise bought: the S2000 did better on the test track and cost less than the Boxster and the Z3 2.8 even though it produced less horsepower and torque than either.

Honda made three different claims about the engine's specific output, one per market. American Honda's press kit said "highest specific output of any normally aspirated production engine in the world" on one page and, on the next, highest "of any normally aspirated 2.0-liter production engine in the world," at 120 hp per liter. Honda Europe called 120 PS per liter "a new record for a mass-produced, normally aspirated engine". Honda Japan, whose car made 250 PS and 125 PS per liter, claimed world top-level performance among two-liter naturally aspirated four-cylinders and no record at all.

By Honda's own count, the 125 PS per liter figure stood for ten years, until 2010, footnoted as Honda's own research on naturally aspirated engines. Karaki names the car that took it: the Ferrari 458 Italia, at 126.7, the year after S2000 production ended. It took a Ferrari V8 with two and a quarter times the displacement, and a decade, to beat a two-liter Honda four-cylinder by a point and a half.

Motor Trend's Chuck Schifsky got a 2000 S2000 to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds by launching at 8,000 rpm and shifting at 8,300. On one run the crew launched and shifted at 5,500 instead, and the time rose to more than eleven seconds. Same car, same day, same magazine, and nearly double the number. Motor Trend's advice to buyers came out of that run: most people would shift too early and never see the best of the engine, which it put between 7,000 and 8,500 rpm, so "treat the S2000 like you hate it and you'll get the most out of it".

The rest of the test: 14.2 seconds through the quarter mile. Motor Trend set those against its own tests of the two cars it said Honda had named as the main competition, a Porsche Boxster at 6.0 seconds to 60 and a BMW Z3 2.8 at 6.3. Its summary was that the S2000 "did better on the test track and costs less" than either, "even though it produces less horsepower and torque".

Car and Driver had reached the car earlier and gotten a different one. Larry Webster's August 1999 test ran 6.8 seconds to 60 and 15.1 at 96 mph, numbers the magazine called lackluster, on a car with 345 miles on the odometer that would not break a wheel loose on the test surface even at nearly 8,000 rpm. Webster wrote that a broken-in car on a drag strip would run mid-fives, and that the magazine would test another one soon. His one complaint reads strangely now, given the reputation the car picked up later: "The tail stays well planted, almost too well... The lack of rear-end action is perhaps the S2000's only shortcoming; we prefer sports cars whose rear ends help out with the steering".

Four months later Car and Driver got its mid-fives, in the four-car test whose prices appeared in "Ninety Per Liter in 1965." Tony Swan's crew took the S2000, a BMW M Roadster, a Mercedes-Benz SLK and a Porsche Boxster three days across Ohio and Michigan and finished at Grattan Raceway Park, a two-mile road course near Grand Rapids. The Honda's best lap was 1:35.6, 1.6 seconds clear of the M Roadster and 4.6 clear of the SLK. Grattan's record for the SCCA's T2 class, a near-stock category that then included the M3 and the SVT Mustang Cobra, stood at 1:39.2, and three of the four street cars on street tires went under it. The 5.8 to 60 came with a warning: little happened before 6,000 rpm, so a hard launch meant abusing the clutch, and the magazine recommended its method only to readers who knew their parts supplier by first name.

The magazine had gone in expecting a fast car and unsure whether it was livable, and came out saying the hyperkinetic reputation was exaggerated, with thrust enough below the 6,000 rpm VTEC threshold for commuting and errands. It called the structure a textbook example of rigidity in a roofless unibody, possibly the stiffest roadster chassis on earth, and credited that stiffness for letting Honda run high roll stiffness with a ride that stayed acceptable, if firmest of the four. Csaba Csere noticed that the arc tachometer put 6,000 rpm straight ahead of the driver, on the line between tame and tigerish. The verdict line was "A purist's sports car, and an extraordinary performance buy," printed under a Highs line that used the word raceworthy five times, for the engine, the gearbox, the chassis, the suspension and the brakes.

MotorWeek, testing a 2000 car at Roebling Road and Road Atlanta the same season, reached the opposite conclusion on the same question. Its "one quibble" was "a lack of low-speed grunt," and its summary was that the engine has to be revved to give its best and that "it gets tiring after awhile, especially on the street". Two American outlets, one model year, and they disagreed about whether the bargain was fair.

Britain sided with MotorWeek and then some. In the summer of 1999 evo drove three of its favorite cars to the S2000's launch party in the south of France to gatecrash it, a Lotus Elise, a Porsche Boxster and a TVR Griffith, and decided the Honda had missed the mark. John Barker restated the verdict in evo's own words in March 2002: "numb steering, dull turn-in and rear suspension that felt squirmy under load," a rear end "breaking away and regaining grip untidily," a car that was "rather half-baked" and left the testers feeling "cheated, even". Richard Meaden, who was on the original test, later summed the car up as "a work of flawed genius".

Then evo drove a 2002 car and changed its mind. Barker found it parried bumps and shrugged off cambers "every bit as good as the Porsche's," with a rear that held up better and a front with more turn-in precision, and called it "a solid four-star evo car". The reservation survived: the Boxster was still marginally the more satisfying car, and with its own money evo would still buy the Porsche. Both cars weighed 1,260 kg, about 2,780 lb, and evo said the Honda felt much lighter anyway.

Four years after Grattan, Car and Driver ran the S2000 around another road course and the result repeated. Patrick Bedard's August 2003 five-car test at BeaveRun in Wampum, Pennsylvania, was built as a $40,000 to $50,000 celebration purchase, and the S2000 went in as a wild card, "the most intense open two-seater you can buy south of Ferrari prices. So what if it lists for only $33,060?". It finished first, ahead of the Nissan 350Z, the Porsche Boxster, the BMW Z4 3.0 and the Audi TT. It was the cheapest car in the field at $33,060 and the only one whose as-tested price matched its sticker; the Boxster came to $50,840 as tested. Its numbers: 5.4 seconds to 60, 14.1 at 99 mph, 0.92 g on the skidpad in a tie with the Z4, and the quickest lap of the five, in Bedard's words, "even though it gives away a full liter of displacement". Car and Driver's one-line verdict was "A four-wheeler with crotch-rocket DNA". Bedard's highs: "Sensual intensity right up there with grabbing a bare high-voltage wire, clutch and shifter as perfect together as Rogers and Astaire, cockpit fits like your favorite jeans." His lows: "Freeway cruising, and resisting the impulse to rip off nine-grand shifts in bursts of five".

Bedard wrote the fit better than anyone. "You don't get in; you put it on as you would your best-fitting jeans". The shifter "travels in microflicks". Below about 6,000 rpm "this Honda plays the sweet little zip-about roadster," and above it, "no more nice little Honda. The VTEC cams switch to HP max, and the sound hardens to combat steel". He also asked himself whether he could stand it as an only car, and answered: "For sure, only an extremist would love it as an interstate cruiser".

Meaden, who never warmed to the chassis, rates the gearbox above nearly everything evo has driven: "very few, if any, of the manual cars we've celebrated compares to the S2000. Its shift has a terrific sense of mechanical connection". Barker on the powerband: "Urge builds usefully up to 6000rpm, the onset of the higher lift VTEC cams, and then seems to ramp up in stages, a second kick arriving at 7000rpm with a nape-prickling, Touring Car-style bark". He corrected the caricature in the same piece: on a weaving road, around 8,000 rpm is a natural shift point, well short of the limiter. Dan Shields, an SCCA Solo national champion, drove an S2000 back to back with a Boxster, a Miata and a Z3 in 2011 and reported no twitchy or tail-happy tendency in the Honda, while saying he had seen it in other cars.

Honda's own documents record every revision to the S2000 by model year, and in order they describe what it cost to sell a 9,000 rpm engine to the public, and how much of the original Honda held onto while paying.

2002. For the 2002 model year Honda changed every spring, damper and anti-roll bar on the American car, and its US parts catalog records each one under a new part number, the front bar going from 28.2 mm to a thinner-walled 26.5 mm. Stiffer springs, softer bars, the front end softened most, and the steering gearbox carried through from 2000 to 2003 untouched.

Honda Japan announced the revision on September 13th, 2001, saying the suspension had been "matured" toward higher-quality handling and a supple ride, listed after the custom color plan, the glass rear window and the stereo. American Honda's 2002 releases mention the glass window with a defroster, "a new high-capacity clutch," "an improved transmission for smoother and quieter shifts," and a stereo up from 20 to 30 watts a channel, and say nothing about the chassis. Honda UK gave evo the list only after the magazine pressed its press office: thinner anti-roll bars, beefed up springs, re-calibrated dampers and "matured steering feel," aimed at "more linear response".

2004. The AP2 is the year Honda paid in revs. The stroke went from 84.0 to 90.7 mm, with the connecting rod shortened from 153.0 to 149.65 mm to fit the longer throw inside the same block, which is how 2.0 liters became 2.2. The fuel cut moved from 9,000 to 8,200 rpm, and Honda's own comparison table footnoted the reason: "Piston travel configuration decreases rpm limit by 9% because of piston speed increase". Torque rose from 153 to 162 lb-ft and arrived 1,000 rpm sooner, at 6,500, and useful power began around 3,000 rpm instead of 6,000.

The chassis moved the same direction: front spring rate up 6.7 percent, rear down 10 percent, rear bar from 27.2 to 25.4 mm, rear tire 20 mm wider on a 17-inch wheel, and the steering ratio from 13.8:1 to 14.9:1, which Honda described as "tuned to match new tire size". Honda's summary line for the handling: "at-the-limit performance increased with more gradual fall-off". Honda's 2001 chassis release had described the AP1's rear geometry as intent; a rear end that used track change under suspension movement to speed weight transfer and help the car take a neutral set. Its 2004 material treats the revisions as tuning for the new tires and the longer stroke, with no fault named anywhere. I read the 2004 car as another compromise: torque for revs and stability for agility. Made by a company that had proven it could do the hard thing and was now asked to sell more of them.

The same spring, production moved from Takanezawa to Suzuka, onto a new low-volume line running 60 units a day beside main lines running 1,100 each.

2006. The cable throttle gave way to drive-by-wire, Vehicle Stability Assist became standard, and the two arrived together because VSA needs an electronic throttle to act. The rating dropped from 240 to 237 hp with no change to the engine, purely because SAE J1349 was revised in August 2004, and Honda said so in a footnote.

2008. The last new version was the CR, and its most praised feature was a piece of the first car. The CR's steering ratio is 13.8:1 at 2.4 turns lock to lock, the AP1's numbers, restored after four model years at 14.9:1 and 2.6 turns. It weighed 51 lb less than the base 2008 car with the hardtop fitted and 99 lb less with it off. Uehara presented it in Torrance the month he retired as "my gift to enthusiasts in the United States".

Racing. In Japan the S2000 took four consecutive Super Taikyu Class 4 titles, 2001 through 2004. In America it won three SCCA Runoffs national championships: Bob Boileau's Touring 3 title in 2009 in a Team Honda Research entry, Chad Gilsinger's in the same class in 2010, and Andrie Hartanto's in Super Touring Under in 2014. At the 2003 Nürburgring 24 Hours the #112 S2000 of Klaus Niedzwiedz, Stefan Schlesack, Nils Bartels and Peter Mamerow won class A3 and finished tenth overall, 129 laps at an average of about 86 mph. Honda's part was support-shaped: contingency money through Honda Racing Line from 2009, entries by its R&D Americas employees, and two CRs built by Honda R&D Americas for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December 2007.

What Honda kept. America gave up the 9,000 rpm engine in the fall of 2003. Japan kept the 2.0 until November 2005, at 11.7:1 compression the whole time. Europe never gave it up. When Honda Motor Europe announced the Ultimate Edition on January 29th, 2009, the run-out car for a model whose production would end that June, the release specified the 2.0-liter engine revving to 9,000 rpm, with numbered kickplates. The last S2000 a European could buy new was closer to the 1999 car than anything an American dealer had sold since 2003.

The Ariel Atom never used it. The most repeated F20C story on the internet puts the engine in the Ariel Atom, and Ariel's own history says otherwise: the Atom launched on a 1.8-liter Rover K-series, took Honda power in 2003 with the Civic Type R's K20A, and runs a turbocharged K20C today. The F20C is a longitudinal engine, laid out to sit behind the front axle and drive the rear wheels, and Honda built almost nothing else that way. The transverse K-series went into everything; the S2000's engine went into the S2000. That is the S2000 in its essence: the layout that made the engine unique also made it difficult to repeat.

Japan got a steering rack with no fixed ratio. In July 2000 Honda launched the Type V, Japan only, with what it calls the first variable gear ratio steering in automotive history: 1.4 turns lock to lock against 2.4 on the standard car, "almost halved" in Honda's phrase, with its own dampers, anti-roll bar and limited-slip differential. It cost 3,560,000 yen in Tokyo against 3,380,000 for the base car, about $32,900 against $31,200 at the July 2000 exchange rate, and 20 kg, about 44 lb, in weight. The car Honda later made friendlier with a slower rack had, in one market, been sold with the quickest steering it ever fitted.

There was never a Type R, and Uehara said why. Asked in 2017, he answered in one word and then explained: "Simple. It was not a car that could produce a Type R, so we did not develop one. The S2000 is a car for driving pleasantly with the roof open... But if we had done a Type R, it would have been with a closed body". The engine that sits above both Type R engines on Honda's own horsepower-per-liter chart never wore the badge, because the car around it was built to have no roof.

Two more, for the spec-sheet readers. Honda's 2004 press kit says "ideal 50/50" weight distribution in its marketing copy and prints 49/51 in the specifications sheet of the same kit. And the six-speed shares no parts with the NSX's six-speed, though both cars went together in the same building; its shift travel is 23 mm across the gate and 40 mm fore and aft, under an inch one way and about an inch and a half the other.

American Honda's obituary for the car, in January 2009, said what the S2000 had been for: "Originally envisioned as a limited-edition tribute to Honda's 50th anniversary, S2000 production was extended in response to customer demand and critical acclaim". The tribute ran ten model years, went to 64 countries, and had passed 110,000 sales worldwide and 65,000 in the United States by the end of December 2008, six months before the last one was built.

Honda's European press kit put the Takanezawa plant's capacity at around 12,000 cars a year, built by teams at a series of work stations. In Japan the domestic sales plan started at 500 cars a month in April 1999, dropped to 350 a month at the Type V launch in July 2000, and was 200 a month by the September 2001 revision, a 60 percent cut in 29 months. At home the car undershot its own plan; in America it outran it, and Honda's own sales charts show by how much.

MotorWeek reported the US allocation for model year 2000 at about 5,000 cars. American Honda's monthly tables record 3,400 sold in the part-year 1999, when September was effectively the first month, then 6,797 in 2000 and 9,682 in 2001. In September 2001 American Honda said sales were running 50 percent ahead of the year before and that slightly improved availability "could allow for S2000 sales of about 8,000 this year"; the year closed at 9,682, and 2002 matched it. Then the slide, from 7,888 in 2003 to 4,302 in 2007. Hagerty's comparison puts the run in scale: through 2007 the S2000 sold about half as many cars in America as the Miata did over the same years, against a Miata design that was already ten years old when the Honda arrived.

The famous production figure is a sales count with a December 2008 cutoff. The 110,673 that circulates comes from Honda Europe's Ultimate Edition release of January 2009, where it is worldwide sales through December 2008, 19,987 of them in Europe. Honda's own worldwide statement is "more than 110,000," same cutoff. For the CR, the numbers are worse: MotorWeek reported 1,500 coming to the United States for 2008, an owner-run VIN enumeration that its own author calls unofficial counts 699 across the two model years, and American Honda published no figure in any of its six CR releases.

The sticker barely moved while the car was on sale. A 2001 base car listed at $32,300 plus $440 destination; a 2009 base car at $34,995 plus $710. In July 2026 dollars those are $60,764 and $54,262, so Honda raised the price by $2,695 across nine model years while inflation took roughly $6,500 of real value out of it.

What a used S2000 costs now depends almost entirely on the odometer, and the summer of 2026 showed it in public. On Bring a Trailer, a 2002 with 39,000 miles sold for $36,000 on August 7th; a 2002 with 745 miles sold for $75,000 on August 21st, two weeks later. On the AP2 side a 34,000-mile 2006 brought $35,050 on August 18th and a 13,000-mile 2006 brought $61,000 six days earlier. Those are four dated sales, and a delivery-mile car is its own market, but the shape repeats in the price guide: Hagerty's most recent report on a 2006 S2000, dated January 30th, 2026, has its condition #2 value up 14.7 percent over the trailing year and its condition #4 value down 5.2 percent over the same year. Clean cars pulled away from rough ones in summer 2026, which may signal the moment a car crosses from used to collectible.

The other thing that crossed this year was Honda's own attitude toward its old cars. On December 12th, 2025 Honda announced Honda Heritage Works, opening in April 2026, with Honda Heritage Parts reproducing discontinued genuine parts across powertrain, interior, exterior, electrical and chassis, and a restoration service in Japan; Acura runs the American arm through its dealerships from summer 2026. Both programs start with the first-generation NSX, with stated plans to expand to other classic sport models. Honda has not named the S2000. The door is open, though, and the AP1 was built in the same building, under the same build process, as the car Honda chose to start with.

So what did the hard way earn them, beyond a number on a tachometer?

A turbo was available to every company Honda raced against on those two Car and Driver road courses in "An Engine To Abuse," and one of them, Audi, had bolted one on; the cheapest car in the field won both times without one, and Car and Driver put the car on its 10Best list four times. A two-liter four-cylinder that makes 240 hp at 8,300 rpm and idles in traffic had to be built by the people who wanted it, from the inside out, and that is what Honda came away owning.

It cost what it cost. The pistons melted until melting became routine. The car missed the birthday it was built for. American drivers were told, in print, for a decade, to shift at 8,000 or go home, and in 2004 Honda took 800 rpm off the American car. I have made my peace with all of that, because two of Honda's three markets kept the 9,000 rpm engine long after America gave it up, and the last S2000 a European could buy new, in 2009, still cut fuel at 9,000.

Which S2000 do I mean when I say the hard way was worth it? The one with the 2.0. A 2002 or 2003 American car has the glass window, the revised springs and bars, and the original engine, steering rack and 9,000 rpm limiter. That is the car I would put in my own garage. The 2.2 is a better car to commute in, and Honda said so in its own comparison table; the 2.0 is the car Honda dared itself to build.

Otobe's verdict from 2009, that a naturally aspirated production engine making that output would never be developed again, has had seventeen years to be proven wrong. The Honda four-cylinder in today's Ariel Atom, the car the internet keeps handing the F20C to, is a turbocharged K20C. The brief Karaki was handed for the F20C, quoted in "Behind the Partition," asked for an engine no one could imitate, one that would make the world gasp. Three decades later, no one has imitated it.

That is what the hard way earned them.

Great cars. Better stories.

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The Fact Desk's reference list for this issue, every source the article cites, grouped by kind. Where a source is reachable only through the Internet Archive, the capture is linked.

Honda documents

1. American Honda Motor Co. "Honda S2000: Introduction." Press kit, February 22, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-5cde0969c7be1d5f5d0747004c34c86f-honda-s2000-introduction

2. American Honda Motor Co. "Honda S2000: Chassis." Press kit, February 22, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-242ffd5358bd8e8b692fdf004c34c870-honda-s2000-chassis

3. American Honda Motor Co. "Honda S2000: Powertrain." Press kit, February 22, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-5cf69ff7f30a01d81cc648004c34c870-honda-s2000-powertrain

4. Honda Motor Europe. "Honda S2000 99." Full European press kit, 1999. https://hondanews.eu/eu/en/media/pressreleases/34329/honda-s2000-99

5. American Honda Motor Co. "S2000 Roadster Continues To Set The Pace With New Features For 2002." September 7, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-1eff1f3944b005df1cf1f8004c34c7ee-s2000-roadster-continues-to-set-the-pace-with-new-features-for-2002

6. American Honda Motor Co. "2002 Honda S2000 Fast Facts." September 7, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-a5141b223a24d73e48dcff004c34c7ef-2002-honda-s2000-fast-facts

7. American Honda Motor Co. "2004 Honda S2000: Introduction." October 1, 2003. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-ba69974ad26fd3055bc4c0004c34c4af-2004-honda-s2000-introduction

8. American Honda Motor Co. "2004 Honda S2000 Specifications." October 1, 2003. https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/release-edd28b30f52d7f29f285b3004c34c4b3-2004-honda-s2000-specifications

9. American Honda Motor Co. "2004 Honda S2000: Powertrain Part 2." October 1, 2003. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-ca251f079166cee8bed468004c34c4ae-2004-honda-s2000-powertrain-part-2

10. American Honda Motor Co. "2004 Honda S2000: Chassis." October 1, 2003. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-0a883d51b49ea932518ce5004c34c4b1-2004-honda-s2000-chassis

11. American Honda Motor Co. "Honda S2000 Adds Performance and Refinement for 2006." September 9, 2005. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-bdfb866248b4b64e28f78b004c34c11f-honda-s2000-adds-performance-and-refinement-for-2006

12. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 Honda S2000: Powertrain." August 15, 2007. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-07a7799dcde4e371e483d2004c34be71-2008-honda-s2000-powertrain

13. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 Honda S2000 Elevates Sports Car Formula with Tightly-focused CR 'Club Racer' Edition." September 13, 2007. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-40d504f97b506d9833a52a004c34bdfb-2008-honda-s2000-elevates-sports-car-formula-with-tightly-focused-cr-club-racer-edition

14. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 Honda S2000 Pricing Starts at $34,300." October 9, 2007. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-f9c88cc0f201ea7218614f004c34bde5-2008-honda-s2000-pricing-starts-at-34-300

15. American Honda Motor Co. "2009 Will Be Final Model Year of Production for Honda S2000." January 26, 2009. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-94b06ebeefdab837e7efec004c34bbae-2009-will-be-final-model-year-of-production-for-honda-s2000

16. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Honda to Discontinue Production of the S2000 Sports Car." January 27, 2009. https://global.honda/en/newsroom/news/2009/4090127eng.html

17. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Honda to Launch S2000 Type V Equipped with the World's First Variable Gear Ratio Steering (VGS) System." July 7, 2000. https://global.honda/en/newsroom/worldnews/2000/4000707.html

18. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Honda S2000 archive specification sheet, 2001 model (Japanese). https://www.honda.co.jp/auto-archive/s2000/2001/shogen.html

19. Honda Motor Europe. "Honda S2000 Ultimate Edition." January 29, 2009. https://hondanews.eu/eu/en/cars/media/pressreleases/962/honda-s2000-ultimate-edition

20. American Honda Motor Co. "2003 Honda S2000 Specifications." August 16, 2002. https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/release-f50455566be9846606e481004c34c6d5-2003-honda-s2000-specifications

21. American Honda Motor Co. "2004 Honda S2000: Powertrain." October 1, 2003. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-4f6f0a361216ba882f335c004c34c4b2-2004-honda-s2000-powertrain

22. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 Honda S2000 and S2000 CR: Introduction." Full press kit, August 15, 2007. https://hondanews.com/en-US/ahm-collection-hall/releases/release-ce4824181b908ba0b57377004c34be6f-2008-honda-s2000-and-s2000-cr-introduction

23. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 Honda S2000 Specifications and Features." August 15, 2007. https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/release-5dbe902175c45502744cfd004c34be73-2008-honda-s2000-specifications-and-features

24. American Honda Motor Co. "2009 Honda S2000 Pricing and EPA Data." December 18, 2008. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-768d110fb7bfb3647b557b004c34bc80-2009-honda-s2000-pricing-and-epa-data

25. American Honda Motor Co. "2001 Honda S2000 Prices and EPA Data." January 5, 2001. https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/release-d5edbb75fde874dd4a0b51004c34c884-2001-honda-s2000-prices-and-epa-data

26. American Honda Motor Co. "2002 through 2008 Honda S2000 Prices and EPA Data." Series of six pricing releases, November 12, 2001 to October 9, 2007, hondanews.com.

27. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Honda to Launch New Heritage Service Business, Honda Heritage Works, in April 2026." December 12, 2025. https://global.honda/en/newsroom/news/2025/4251212eng.html

28. American Honda Motor Co. "Acura to Kick Off Honda Heritage Parts Program in the U.S. with Reproduction Parts for First-Generation Acura NSX." March 10, 2026. https://hondanews.com/en-US/releases/release-b2b85c2cde944ef0d23c0483c50194a8-acura-to-kick-off-honda-heritage-parts-program-in-the-us-with-reproduction-parts-for-first-generation-acura-nsx

29. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Memories of S2000." Developer roster and signed messages from Uehara, Otobe, Tsukamoto and Sawai, 2009 (Japanese). Internet Archive capture, March 30, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090330180720/http://www.honda.co.jp:80/S2000/memories/

30. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Talking of S2000." Five-part developer roundtable published for the car's second anniversary, 2001 (Japanese). Internet Archive capture, October 14, 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20031014024801/http://www.honda.co.jp/S2000/backnumber/talking/index.html

31. National Institute of Informatics (CiNii Research). Bibliographic records for Honda R&D Technical Review Vol. 11 No. 1, the S2000 special issue, April 15, 1999. https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390307523783944832

32. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "75 Years of Honda History," English edition, multiple chapters. https://global.honda/en/about/history-digest/75years-history/chapter3/section2_8/page2.html

33. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Honda S2000 prototype press kit, September 24, 1998 (Japanese). https://global.honda/jp/news/1998/4980924b.html

34. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. S2000 production launch release, April 15, 1999 (Japanese). https://www.honda.co.jp/news/1999/4990415.html

35. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Takanezawa and Suzuka production releases, July 1, 2003 and February 4, 2004 (Japanese). https://global.honda/jp/news/2003/c030701a.html

36. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Honda S2000 Fact Book, April 1999 (Japanese). https://www.honda.co.jp/factbook/auto/s2000/199904/

37. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Honda Hosts Largest Gathering of S2000s in History." September 19, 2007. https://global.honda/en/newsroom/worldnews/2007/4070919S2000.html

38. Honda Racing Newsroom, American Honda Motor Co. "Honda, Acura Drivers Claim Five Titles At SCCA National Championship Runoffs" (September 29, 2009), and the 2012 and 2014 Runoffs releases. https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-racing/releases/release-1ade50cdeb22c432057920004c34bac2-honda-acura-drivers-claim-five-titles-at-scca-national-championship-runoffs

39. American Honda Motor Co. 2000 S2000 Owner's Manual, online reference edition (PDF). http://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/OM/AH/AS20000OM/enu/S20000OM.PDF

40. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Annual Report 2000, part 2 (fiscal year ended March 31, 2000). http://world.honda.com/investors/annualreport/2000/2000AR_2.pdf

41. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. S2000 minor model change release, September 13, 2001 (Japanese). https://www.honda.co.jp/news/2001/4010913-s2000.html

42. American Honda Motor Co. "Club Racer-Inspired Honda S2000 CR Prototype to Debut at New York International Auto Show." March 13, 2007. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20120422120750id_/http://www.hondanews.com/channels/honda-automobiles/archive/2006/releases/club-racer-inspired-honda-s2000-cr-prototype-to-debut-at-new-york-international-auto-show

43. American Honda Motor Co. "2008 S2000 CR to Make Racing Debut at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill Severe Endurance Race." October 30, 2007. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20120610124210id_/http://hondanews.com/channels/honda-automobiles/archive/2007/releases/2008-s2000-cr-to-make-racing-debut-at-the-25-hours-of-thunderhill-severe-endurance-race

44. American Honda Motor Co. American Honda Vehicle Sales, December monthly charts, model breakouts by division, 2000 to 2007. Internet Archive captures of hondanews.com.

45. American Honda Motor Co. "Honda Accord Best-Selling Car in America for 2001 Model Year." October 3, 2001. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20011202034537id_/http://hondanews.com:80/forms/corp/sales/2001MYsales.html

46. American Honda Motor Co. "American Honda Vehicle Sales for September, 2000." October 2000. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20011202052410id_/http://hondanews.com:80/forms/corp/sales/ModelYearRecord.html

47. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. Honda S2000 Philosophy: Concept, History, Story. Launch-period site essays, 1999 (Japanese). Internet Archive capture, October 7, 1999. http://web.archive.org/web/19991007141644/http://www.honda.co.jp:80/S2000/philosophy/concept/index.html

48. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. "Memories of S2000": journalist and instructor messages, including Takumi Yoshida, 2009 (Japanese). Internet Archive capture, March 30, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090330200804/http://www.honda.co.jp:80/S2000/memories/journalist/kazuo_shimizu/

49. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. 75-year history, chapter III, section 2, item 8, "60 years of automobile engine evolution," pages 2 and 3, 2023 (Japanese, with Honda's English edition). https://global.honda/jp/guide/history-digest/75years-history/chapter3/section2_8/page2.html

50. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. 31st Tokyo Motor Show, Honda exhibit release, October 18, 1995 (Japanese). https://global.honda/jp/news/1995/c951018.html

51. MotorWeek. "2000 Honda S2000 (Round 2)," Program #1935. Maryland Public Television, 2000. https://motorweek.org/road_tests/2000_honda_s2000round_2program_1935/

52. MotorWeek. "2000 Honda S2000," Program #1904. Maryland Public Television, 2000. https://motorweek.org/road_tests/2000_honda_s2000program_1904/

53. MotorWeek. "2000 Porsche Boxster S," Program #1913. Maryland Public Television, 2000. https://motorweek.org/road_tests/2000_porsche_boxster_sprogram_1913/

54. MotorWeek. "2008 Honda S2000 CR," Episode 2728. Maryland Public Television, 2008. https://motorweek.org/road_tests/2008_honda_s2000_cr/

55. Richard Meaden. "Honda S2000 (1999-2009) review: 9000rpm for £13k, but it still falls flat." evo, current page dated May 5, 2026; Meaden was on the original evo issue 009 group test. https://www.evo.co.uk/honda/s2000

56. Tony Swan. "Bending the Rules: 2000 Honda S2000 vs. the German Roadsters." Car and Driver, October 1999. Internet Archive capture of the online republication. https://web.archive.org/web/20260131144403/https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a70013058/2000-honda-s2000-vs-bmw-m-roadster-mercedes-slk-porsche-boxster/

57. automobilsport.com. "24h Nürburgring: Honda Rückblick 2003." The live domain no longer resolves; Internet Archive capture, March 12, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070312051201/http://www.automobilsport.com/24h-nurburgring-honda-rueckblick-eifel-mannschaftsleistung-schlesack-mamerow-bartels-rink-weiland-von-saurma-jeltsch-uwe-nittel-wester-arno---12208.html

58. Dino Dalle Carbonare. "Car Feature: Power House Amuse S2000 GT1." Speedhunters, February 24, 2012. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/2018/https://www.speedhunters.com/2012/02/car_feature_gt_gt_power_house_amuse_s2000_gt1/

59. Web Motor Magazine. "1995, Honda shows the SSM, the base of the S2000" (Japanese), undated. https://web.motormagazine.co.jp/_ct/17311391

60. Shun'ichi Uchida. "Four developers tell the story of the Honda S2000's birth" (Japanese). Response.jp, April 12, 2023. https://response.jp/article/2023/04/12/369829.html

61. Larry Webster. "2000 Honda S2000," the original US instrumented test. Car and Driver, August 1999. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20200612153745/https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15142081/2000-honda-s2000-archived-test-review/

62. Patrick Bedard. "2003 Audi TT vs. BMW Z4, Honda S2000, Nissan 350Z, Porsche Boxster." Car and Driver, August 2003. Internet Archive capture, October 18, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20191018135338/https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15144597/2003-audi-tt-vsbmw-z4-honda-s2000-nissan-350z-porsche-boxster-comparison-tests/

63. Patrick Bedard. The same Car and Driver article, later and fuller capture, September 13, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220913053325id_/https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15144597/2003-audi-tt-vsbmw-z4-honda-s2000-nissan-350z-porsche-boxster-comparison-tests/

64. Chuck Schifsky. "Honda S2000," instrumented road test. Motor Trend, November 1999. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20000301015425/http://www.motortrend.com/nov99/hondas2000/1.html

65. John Barker. "Honda S2000 v Porsche Boxster: The Comeback Kid." evo, March 2002. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20071222014524/http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/cargrouptests/19706/honda_s2000_v_porsche_boxster.html

66. John Kiewicz, ed. "Comptech S2000." Motor Trend, August 2001. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20020204064015/http://www.motortrend.com/aug01/s2000/1.html

67. Kazuhiko Tsunoda. "Gaining New Insight Into Aluminum Body Production." Transcript, UM-OSAT Automotive Management Briefing Seminar, August 2000, hosted by InsightCentral.net. Internet Archive capture. https://web.archive.org/web/20080723114858/http://insightcentral.net/KB/development/tsunoda.html

68. Scott Lear. "Which is best? S2000 vs. Boxster vs. Miata vs. Z3." Grassroots Motorsports, May 2011. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/roadster-comparison-honda-s2000-porsche-boxster-ma/

69. Hideaki Kataoka. Shigeru Uehara interview, part 6 (Japanese). Holiday Auto / Web Motor Magazine, interview February 22, 2017, published March 16, 2018. https://web.motormagazine.co.jp/_ct/17153209

70. NHTSA. Complaint on a model year 2000 S2000, oil consumption to rod bearing failure, filed June 25, 2008 (ODI 10233734). https://api.nhtsa.gov/complaints/complaintsByVehicle?make=honda&model=s2000&modelYear=2000

71. Hagerty Valuation Team. Hagerty Vehicle Valuation Reports, 2001, 2004 and 2006 Honda S2000, June 10, 2025, June 18, 2025 and January 30, 2026 (2006 report linked). https://assets.ctfassets.net/x8mrk904j4k6/5a1pctsu4CMbXeuLykSHCh/0f8cd84183456fca84747a89b6cca73d/2006_Honda_S2000_2026-01-30.pdf

72. Bring a Trailer. Honda S2000 sold listings, August 4 to September 7, 2026, captured September 8, 2026. https://bringatrailer.com/honda/s2000/

73. NHTSA. Recalls and Complaints databases, queried by make, model and model year on September 8, 2026 (model year 2000 recalls query linked). https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle?make=honda&model=s2000&modelYear=2000

74. NHTSA manufacturer communication records, republished by CarComplaints and HondaProblems. Honda S2000 technical service bulletin listings by model year. https://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/S2000/2000/tsbs/

75. Sports Car Club of America. 2022 Club Racing Media Guide and Record Book, and Solo National Championship class results for 2013, 2019 and 2023. https://www.scca.com/downloads/64212-22-club-runoffs-media-guide-v1/download

76. Super Taikyu Net. Official season results, 2000 to 2004. Internet Archive capture of the 2001 standings; the 2002 to 2004 equivalents in the registry. https://web.archive.org/web/20041211183018/http://www.so-net.ne.jp/s-taikyu/2001/rnkng.html

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