Originally Printed by Car and Driver Magazine, August 2003, Vol. 49 No. 2, Page 58-59.
Sports-car fantasies always have you snugged into a form-fitting cockpit, your hands at 10 and 2, the engine on full boil thrusting the tail wide as you can through a fast sweeper. Yeah!
Sports-car fantasies are never about interstate cruising and schlepping your mother-in-law to mah-jongg.
The Honda S2000 was born a star in those daydreams. Its a tightly packaged two-seater, spare and smoothly muscled rather like an Olympic swimmer. Everything about it is taut and athletic and purposeful. You dont get in; you put it on as you would your best fitting jeans. There's plenty of room to move -- well, any moves you'd make in the course of driving -- but no room for rinkles. You know how, when jeans fit, everthing comes at the right placees? The S2000 is like taht. The tunnel is the perfect hight for a center armrest. The wheel has that just-right nearly verticle presentation, so you can straigh-arm the wheel stirling Moss-style and still have an easy reach over the top. And the guages are close behind the rim.
Okay, regulars at big-and-tall shops may be in for dissappointment, but the S2000 fits most staffers just right.
Haring around is not the mandatory driving style in sports cars, but to qualify for the class they must be capeable of it. And if you drive this Honda politely, you'll never know about its other moods. Ride harshness is Boxter level, but the car feels much crisper. Weight is less by 189 pounds, and the controls are sharper. The clutch stroke is succinct. The stubby aluminum shifter travels in microflicks. Precision machinery, that's the feel.
And if you keep the yellow graphic arc of the tach below, say, 6000, this Honda plays the sweet little zip-about roadster.
Above 6000, no more nice little HOnda. THe VTEC cams switch to HP max, and the sound hardens to combat steel and you're in the full Formula 1 mode, hell-bent on a grid position at Monte Carlo. Default to fighting reflexes. Lead the arcing yellow as you would a low-flying clay. Dont wait for it to touch the nine-grand redline; you'll be into the rev limter. Pull. Snick! Push. Snick! Pull. Snick!
Check the mirrors for flashing lights! Whew. How long can you keep lving like this?
This is a scalpel-quick sports car when you keep it boiling, quickest of the bunch around the BeaveRun road course, barely behind the Z4 in acceleration, even though it gives away a full liter of displacement. Think intensity. Think fury.
Think.....could I stand this as an only car?
For sure, only an extremist would love it as an interstate cruiser. And yet, and yet....so mch excitement for a fraction of the Porsche and BMW prices. Actually, the Honda's interior details, particularly the leather wheel, look richer than the Porsche's. The metal-trimmed pedals and footrest fir the racy personality exacyly.
On the dash, to the left of the wheel, you'll see a substantial red button. It starts the Adventure.
Ready to drive into your daydream?
Honda S2000
Highs: Sensual intensity right up there with grabbing a bare-voltage wire, clutch and shifter as perfect together as Rogers and Astaire, cockpit fits you like your favorite jeans.
Lows: Freeway cruising, and resisting the impulse to rip off nice-grand shifts in bursts of five.
The Verdict: A four-wheeler with crotch rocket DNA.
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