The Honda S2000 Is Still a Fantastic Old-School Sports Car

this is a 2000 Honda S2000 and it's an absolute Joy way back in 2025 years ago Honda decided to come out with its version of the classic sports car Roadster rear wheeel drive two seats manual transmission open roof and the result was great and it's still great all these years later today I'm going to review this S2 ,000 tell you what I love about it and show you all of its quirks and [Applause] features before I get started big news this S2000 is currently for sale and it's being auctioned live on cars and bids this S2000 is finished in beautiful new formula red it has just over 23,000 mil and it's amazingly unmodified and it can be doors on cars and bids so once you finish watching this video click the link in the description below to visit the live auction for this S2000 where you can bid on it and buy it only on cars and bids all right time for the quirks and features of the S2000 starting with a little overview so throughout the 1990s Japan created an enormous amount of fantastic performance cars some of the most iconic sports cars of the decade came from Japan and there was also a lower tier of entry-level sports cars that were also fantastic from basically every Japanese automaker but in the mid to late 1990s those cars started to go away they were cancelled largely due to an economic recession in Japan but also because of declining interest in dropping 60 Grand on a Mitsubishi so Japan ruled the 1990 for performance cars and then it all kind of came apart by the end of the decade and then this the Honda S2000 came out in 2000 as a reminder to the world that Japan could still build fantastic performance cars and they did with this one the S2000 was sold all the way through 2009 but the original 2000 S2000 was the most barebones basic the S2000 in its pure form I say that because the original S2000 had a plastic rear window instead of a glass one that came later very simple and basic it also didn't have a clock inside you know how your car has a clock yeah well this one didn't they wanted to go pure and this car comes from the 2000 model year the most pure of the s2000s now I recently reviewed an S2000 CR the racer version that was made at the end of S2000 production I also reviewed the S2000 was in the Fast and the Furious movie but I haven't reviewed a regular S2000 in almost 7 years and I've never done an AP1 the original S2000 I love this car and I figured now was the time so let's get to the quirks now one of the first quirks you notice about the S2000 comes when you first climb inside and go to turn the car on you have a traditional metal key that goes into an ignition Keyhole but you twist it and it doesn't start that's because this car has an engine start button mounted over here to the left of the steering wheel in addition to a key that you put in and twist it actually adds a step to the process of turning on the S2000 now this was not uncommon in this car's era everybody thought starter buttons were cool but they hadn't yet figured out proximity keys to let the car know you already inside so a lot of different sports cars from this era including my 4D GT you had to stick the key in twist it and then push a button now the next thing you notice when you look around this interior is there's no radio the S2000 was a basic car but it doesn't even have a radio well actually it's hidden behind this plastic panel you push here and the panel door comes off and that's where your radio head unit is located but that's not the quirkiest thing about the radio check this out if you wanted to control the radio from the driver's seat you could just press the buttons on the head unit or you had separate radio controls over here to the left of the steering wheel next to the engine start stop button which takes us to another important thing about this interior it was intended to be a cockpit that was specifically focused on the driver this was a driver's sports car more than anything else the passenger was an afterthought and so as you can see all of the stuff in this interior is aimed directly at the driver and directly in the driver's easy reach and so the stereo controls are mounted over there because you could easily adjust things without taking your hand too far off the wheel you're in some hard coring situation you don't want to reach all the way down here you want to just tap something and go right back to driving and that was their thinking and it's the same situation with the climate controls as you can see they're directly next to the steering wheel and they're slim down to only be the most basic of the climate controls you don't have a wide range of different screens and options here you just have a couple of buttons a couple of dials that's it it was all intended to be basic simple and Driver focused and for one little piece of humor on the climate controls you can see there's an image of an S2000 instead of a generic car that made it on there otherwise there was no humor this car was focused and the interior layout is Clear Proof and then we move on to the gauge cluster which in the S2000 has now become famous this full digital gauge cluster display not a common thing to see in the early to mid 2000s a lot of cars had this in the 80s going into the early 90s but the S2000 brought it back with this digital tachometer going across the entire top of the gauge cluster looked very cool and then a large speed readout directly in the center that told you how fast you were going and all the other stuff was digital too your odometer your trip odometer and your engine temperature and fuel gauges this very distinctive S2000 digital gauge cluster one interesting Quirk of this cluster there's a button here marked cell I guess for select if you press and hold that down it switches your cluster into kilometers so your miles turn into kilometers and your speed turns into kilm per hour you can do that with the simple push of a button now one interesting thing about the 2000 for all its focus on pure driving performance it did have a few nice creature Comfort amenities you might not expect but then it also missed out on some obvious convenience items that you would expect every C would have so let's talk through the odd Creature Comforts first for one there's cruise control which is kind of a surprise in a car that doesn't have a clock skipped the clock but we added Cruise you turn it on with this weird butt button right next to the gauge cluster and then you can adjust it using these buttons or switches on the steering wheel so you do get cruise control in this car maybe more surprisingly you did have a power operated convertible top a lot of pure driving performance cars the top is manually operated you got to reach back and do it but not here there's a switch in the center that's marked roof if you press that forward the roof obviously comes up automatically it's pretty quick and then it Clos in place as you can see now you do still have to manually latch the roof to the top of the windshield which is pretty common for convertible especially in this era you still have to latch it down but the majority of the process is done automatically which is a nice creature comfort you might not expect in a pure driving car of course same deal the other way first you unlatch the roof from the top of the windshield as you can see and then you just push the roof button the other direction and the roof automatically goes back into place and then it's back down it's a pretty simple system but it is automatic also worth pointing out with the roof up you can see that plastic rear window now like I mentioned in the later s 20000 models they went to a glass rear window and here you can see why the plastic starts to bend and then it gets cloudy you can't really see through it all that well most people driving these cars only do it on sunny days with the roof down so it doesn't matter but that was an upgrade for the later s2000s now as far as traditional convenience Comfort items that most cars have that the S2000 doesn't probably the best example is traditional storage locations in the interior this car does not have a glove box over on the passenger side of the dashboard no glove box over there okay it also doesn't have door panel storage like there's no pocket inside the door panel for a wallet or other simple items you might want to put there that is a little bit more unusual and the center armrest in the center console it is not a lid that lifts up to provide storage either those three items are the most common storage locations in a car and the S2000 has none of them but it does give you back some storage compartments in unorthodox areas in the center console next to the parking brake you can see this little plastic panel you push that and it opens to reveal I guess kind of a makeshift cup holder but it's also a little storage pocket if you need it directly behind the seats between the back rest you have this storage compartment if you open it up with this latch you can see storage is in here and it also locks in place as you can see so this does serve as an alternative to your glove box now inside this storage compartment you have a button to pop open the trunk that's where your trunk popper is located and they put it in there because this compartment locks so if you want to hand the car to a valet or someone else that you don't trust with your trunk you can lock this up so they can't get in but with this storage compartment open you can also access another hidden storage compartment which is located here you lift this up and it lifts up the wind deflector in back as well and then you have even more storage here in the center this is a nice hidden compartment where you can stick stuff that probably nobody will ever find it unless they've seen this video and another interesting sacrifice for comfort in the S2000 comes in the passenger foot wheel where you have a rather large hump it's just there you have to deal with it that's part of riding as a passenger in this car again the passenger was very much deprioritized compared to the driver there's a good example and another good example is the climate vent situation the passenger gets one just one vent the driver has two mounted in this cockpit-like driving position angled directly on the driver to make the most comfortable as possible the passenger gets one now there are some vents directly above the radio blank out panel but they don't move you can't adjust where they're pointed so that doesn't really help things the passenger just has to deal with their single climate vent but that makes sense when you think about it the goal was not Comfort it wasn't giving the passenger the finest luxury experience the goal of the S2000 was Pure Performance so let's talk about that performance when the S2000 came out in 2000 it had a 2 L net naturally aspirated 4-cylinder with 240 horsepower that was a huge number a massive boost over the Mazda Miata at the time which was kind of this car's closest analog but it only had 153 lb feet of torque now I remember I was 12 years old when this car came out and I remember I was a 12 13year old who was on all the car internet forums I was lying about my age seem older than I was weren't we all but I remember all the other 12 to 14 year- olds on the forums were laughing at this car because of its torque figure it was kind of pathetic it was almost Economy Car territory and because this car had a 9,000 RPM Red Line and because of the way this engine was designed you really had to ring it out in order to get access to all of its power and torque that was a complaint about this car when it came out it wasn't just a fast car it was only fast if you really stepped on it got it way into the Rev range and who really wants to drive it around at Red Line all the time in town now over the years I think that's become one of the Charming things about this car but back in the day it was a criticism and Honda reacted to it the original S2000 with its 2 L engine was only sold from 2000 to 2003 in 04 they came out with a revised engine that was enlarged to 2.2 L and the torque fig figure grew to 161 lb feet now that increase of 8 PB feet of torque may not seem like much but with the larger engine and with some different tuning the torque was available lower in the Rev range and so it provided power a little bit more quickly and a little bit earlier to address some of those complaints about the earlier cars and just how peaky the engine was and how hard power was to get now in the S2000 World there will perpetually a debate about which is better the AP1 this car the original or the ap2 with its enlarged engine that came later the AP1 was the pure form of S2000 with that Revy engine but the ap2 does feel a little bit faster regardless of your stance that's the basic situation as for the engine itself you can see where it's placed way back in the engine bay in fact the bulk of the engine is hanging out behind the front axle which really does make this a mid-engine car and gives you an idea of the weight distribution situation even though the S2000 has a long hood and a long front end the engine is pretty far back in order to make the car more balanced which becomes tremendously obvious the moment you drive the car this level of balance that the engine provides and by the way it's also worth noting that regardless of AP1 or ap2 S2000 whether it's an early 2000 model or for a late 2009 the formula of this car was always the same small size open roof two-seater rear wheel drive manual transmission that never changed throughout the entire production run of this car now as far as other interesting quirks and features on the outside of the S2000 let's talk about badging the only S2000 badge on this car was the one on the fender you can see it on the passenger fender over there it was also repeated over here on the driver's side but it didn't have an S2000 badge front or rear now the name itself S2000 had a dual purpose 200000 was because this car came out in the year 2000 and it sort of commemorated the Millennium but it was also a tribute to earlier Honda sports cars that had come out in the ' 50s 60s and 7s the original was the S500 which had a 500cc engine roughly then they came out with the S600 with a 600c engine and then all these decades later the S2000 comes out with a 2000cc engine and it just so happened to also come out in the year 2000 so it worked perfectly that's where the name comes from as for the overall design of this car I have always loved it this was a tremendously attractive car well-proportioned very nice looking from every angle it was a really clean simple and beautiful design and and it was a lot more muscular and aggressive than the Miata the S2000 was more powerful in the Miata it was more expensive and when you saw it on the road it looked like it meant business more than a Miata this had the rep then and still does of a more serious more focused driver's car and the design was part of the reason also worth pointing out the wheels whether you prefer the AP1 or the ap2 S2000 I always liked the wheels best on this car the original AP1 Wheels now as you can imagine a lot of these s2000s got modified people changed the wheels but I always thought that was a mistake I always thought these looked great and they still look great almost 25 years later as for the rear end there are a few very interesting items back here for one the tail lights always love to look at these tail lights with their clear lenses and then inside you have the actual red for brake lights or orange for turn signals or white for reverse light component these tail lights with the clear and then the regular lights inside they were all the rage in the era when this car came out and I think they still look cool and they're very emblematic of this time period one thing I didn't like in the rear end was the keyhole for the trunk which was stuck directly in the middle of kind of nowhere it was stupid that it was so prominent when they could have maybe hidden it under the badge or something like that but they didn't it was always just stuck there right in the center breaking up the otherwise attractive lines in back now as for the trunk itself there are a couple of interesting quirks worth discussing in here an obvious one is this hump in the middle of the trunk which is of course for the spare tire for this car you take that off and the spare is in there and it's kind of funny to see the hump but unquestionably the most humorous item inside this trunk is over on the left side where you can see there's a bag that says S2000 you're thinking what exactly is that what's in there so you pull it off and discover that underneath is the CD changer the bag is there to protect the CD changer and since the CD changer was just hanging out in the trunk you can also see that Honda built a cage around the CD changer it came this way from the factory just in case stuff was rolling around back there in the trunk you didn't want it to slam into the CD changer and break it so you have a c back there in order to keep it safe and protected and if that wasn't enough protection you put on the bag for even more that's certainly one way to make sure the CD changer doesn't get damaged a lot of other automakers just stick it on the side of the trunk and then put a panel over it but here we have a bag and a cage now last interesting thing worth noting in the trunk is it's actually surprisingly large it certainly isn't huge by any standards but for a little car like this a purist sports car where driving is the main focus it's nice to see you do have some trunk space and even more carved out in the floor for extra items you certainly could take this on a nice weekend getaway with a driver Focus all right the Honda S2000 the original S2000 it's been 6 years since I reviewed a regular S2000 I did the S2000 CR a couple of years ago 18 months ago but it's been so long since I've actually been in an S2000 and driven a regular S2000 for a review and I got to say this car reminds me every time I get inside the very same thing which is if you're looking at a list of the greatest driver cars of all time and it does not include this car then that list was not compiled by a serious person this car deserves to be mentioned in the very highest echelons of cars I drove to work today in my career in GT it was incredible I get in this car and I'm thinking it's not really all that far behind obviously the career GT has got more power and more sound but in terms of a pure driver's car this does so many things right that some of the very best pure driers cars do right the steering feel is absolutely fantastic just really really really really excellent it doesn't quite have the same level of precise IM mediacy as a brand new sports car there is a little play on Center but you do have an amazing linear feel to the steering that just gives you so much control and makes you feel so capable when you're driving this car the handling is unbelievable it's one of the very best especially at this price point of any car the car goes exactly where it's pointed it's so little and tossable and fun and exciting it's just like a Miata in that respect um not going to say it's better or worse there's a lot of debate about that already but I will say it's faster it feels about as quick to change directions as the as the vaunted Miata and yet it's a faster overall car to drive and let's talk about that for a second people complained when this car came out that you had to work so hard in order to get access to the power that is true you do have to work hard but to me that has become part of the fun of the car which is it's just you ring it out and enjoy it you know back in 2000 when this car came out back in a an age of V8s and that sort of thing it was whatever now we have all these electric cars we have dual clutch Transmissions power comes so easy in cars and in this one you have to work for it and that has that has made this car Charming it's not like any car from this era is fast Anyway by modern standards so at least let it be fun at least let it be engaging and that's exactly what this car is you work for the power and that's a good thing you can rev out this engine frankly it sounds pretty good and it's a lot of fun to do and of course you get the ability to shift gears in one of the great gear shift situations of all time perfectly weighted shifter ball fantastic gear action in the sense that it's not vague at all it notches perfectly into gear but it's not too notchy where you're fighting against it or where you're running up against some weird ridges like in some cars the clutch is great EX exactly the weight you want it to be and exactly the smoothness you want to be I mean this car was just designed by people who paid an enormous amount of attention to Great sports cars and they created a great sports car add to the fact that it looks good that it's relatively reliable uh that it doesn't really lose value uh and that it's a convertible and so you can enjoy an open roof it has it all no wonder s2000s are so desired even 25 years after they first came out no wonder they're holding their value so well no wonder the nice ones have really shut up in value this is an experience you can't get in that many other places and it's amazing to have the experience here I will say if there is a drawback to this car and there are very few drawbacks to this car but if there is going to be one I would say it's not the most special car when it first came out it was like oh an S2000 now it's kind of blended into the normaly of life like nobody looks at you like it's not a you wouldn't you wouldn't turn heads at Cars and Coffee it's not what I would call like a tremendously special or exciting car you wouldn't freak out if you saw one it's a great car to drive it's a great car to be in it's a great car to shift gears and accelerate but it's not like wow that's a car that gets mentioned in a list of like really really desirable cars and as a result of that as great as it is you know I think it will never quite reach the heights of exotic cars or even high performance versions of regular cars the z6s of the world even though frankly from a driving perspective it might be better but they made a lot of them they made it for 10 years so this car will never like have the feel of like wow I can't believe I saw one of those today which is maybe a little bit sad for some people but from a driving perspective it is one of the all-time greats and every time I get in an S2000 I'm REM reminded I love this car and so that's the original Honda S2000 one of the coolest cars in its day and still fantastic all these years l I love this car I always have and it's always a treat to drive around in one and you can buy this one on cars and bids and now it's time to give the S2000 a Doug score and the Doug score is here 55 out of 100 which places the S2000 here against some similar cars the ap-1 S2000 gets the very same score as the ap2 S2000 I reviewed several years ago which makes sense as these cars are very similar there are some notable differences but not enough to move the score up or down by a full point whether you choose an AP1 or an ap2 the S2000 is an absolutely fantastic sports car with one of the great driving experiences of all time and it's no wonder these are holding their value and still in high demand even 25 years after they first came [Music] out

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 339,723

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Id: 2PzsMxuxl6U

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024