Between the new NSX and Civic Type R, Honda has brought back some real performance legends recently. But there’s one that enthusiasts desperately want to see revived.
That, as you might have guessed, is the S2000. Built in the same facility as the original NSX, the S2000 was Honda’s 50th birthday present to itself – a high-revving roadster with no frills but all the thrills.
In this video from the Honda Heritage collection, the company’s British curator shows us around a rather special example: an Edition 100, one of the final S2000s made. It features a special grand-prix white paintjob with blacked-out brightwork, graphite alloys, and a red interior. Classic Japanese road rocket stuff, this, and one of only 100 produced.
Like any other S2000, it packs a 2.0-liter inline-four producing 237 horsepower and (in the later AP2 models) 162 lb-ft of torque.
Nothing mind-blowing, really, but it could scream all the way up to 9,000 rpm in the AP1 and 8,200 rpm in the AP2. At those revs, the pistons were moving faster than an F1 car’s. That in and of itself made it a blast to drive, as you can see from the video below. Now if Honda will only make a new one.