Honda S2000

Honda S2000 (AP1 1999 to 2003, AP2 2004 to 2009)

Honda built this for its 50th birthday and never really topped it

The S2000 arrived in 1999 to mark Honda's 50th anniversary, and it reads like a company showing off. Front engine, drive going to the rear wheels, weight sitting close to 50:50, and a six-speed manual as the only gearbox. There was never an automatic option and never any paddles, just three pedals and a proper lever. You sit low, you drop the roof, and away you go. Decades on it still feels like one of the most honest sports cars anyone has bolted together.

The party trick is the engine. The AP1 runs the F20C, a 2.0 litre four making somewhere around 240 to 250 PS depending on the market it was built for, and it gets there by revving to a barely believable 9,000rpm. At launch that worked out near 120 horsepower per litre, reckoned to be the highest specific output of any naturally aspirated production car until roughly 2010. The catch is that all the good stuff lives up top. Below the VTEC crossover it feels like an ordinary warm hatch. Wind it out past six grand and it turns into something else, howling toward the redline while you grin like an idiot.

The AP2 from 2004 calmed things a shade. Most later cars, certainly the US ones and eventually the Japanese ones, picked up the F22C, a 2.2 litre with more torque down low and a redline dropped to around 8,000rpm. I say most because the market history gets messy. Japan hung onto the 2.0 for the first couple of AP2 years, and some regions kept the F20C for the whole run, so check the actual car in front of you rather than trusting the badge or the year. Honda also revised the suspension to soften the early car's reputation, and freshened the lights and bumpers.

That reputation is worth spelling out. Early cars earned a name for snap oversteer, the rear stepping out fast and with little warning if you lift mid corner or get greedy with the throttle on a slick road. It is perfectly manageable once you respect it, though an AP1 in the wet will punish lazy hands. The AP2 chassis changes take a fair bit of the bite out of it.

Buying one today, the money sits with honest, unmolested cars. Dig through the service history and look hard for signs of track abuse or a past crash repair, because plenty of these got thrashed. Check clutch wear and how cleanly the box slots into second and third, since worn synchros show up on hard-driven examples. The soft-top is a known cost, so inspect the plastic rear window and the frame for tears or seized mechanisms, and take a torch to the rear banana arms and the sills for rust, especially on imports that have seen road salt. A tidy standard car with no funny modifications will always cost more than a modified one, and it is worth every cent. Values for clean stock examples have been climbing for years and I doubt that stops soon.