The thing that makes inexpensive roadsters a delight is the same thing that makes new ones a little difficult to sell. The basic roadster formula is so good and so well established that it may lead enthusiasts to ask if they really need to shell out the money for a new one when there are so many good old ones around?
The YouTube channel Track Day sought to find out by pitting two new cheap roadsters against an older one. They got the Mazda MX-5/Miata RF along with its sibling, the Fiat 124 Abarth Spider, and put them to the test against one of the finest roadsters of the aughts, the Honda S2000 to see if the 15-year-old Honda could keep up with the more recent stuff.
To sort it out, they ran two drag races and a lap around a short circuit. It’s here that it will become necessary to reveal that these cars are all a little bit modified. The Fiat is by far the most modified, though the host claims that if he leaves it out of “Sport” mode, it runs stock power.
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Stock power for the base 124 Abarth being 164 hp (166 PS/122 kW) and 184 lb-ft (249 Nm) of torque from its turbocharged 1.6-liter engine in North American spec. This one, in particular, uses an automatic transmission, but that might not be as big a disadvantage as you think against the two manuals. The Miata makes use of a 2.0-liter naturally aspirated engine that makes 181 hp (184 PS/135 kW) and 151 lb-ft (205 Nm) of torque. Finally, there’s the S2000. This one uses the 2.2-liter engine that means it’s good for 237 hp (240 PS/176 kW) and 162 lb-ft (219 Nm) of torque.
The Miata’s mods are not covered and may be limited to the visual kind, while the S2000 has a cat-back exhaust that’s unlikely to have a huge impact on the performance of the car, which, it turns out, is pretty darned good.
In the rolling race, the S2000 walks away from the other two, though a botched shift means that the automatic Fiat can run away with the win in the standing drag race. Around the little handling course, the automatic Fiat wins again but the host puts the roughly one-second advantage it has over the others down to the fact that it’s his wife’s car and he is, therefore, more familiar with the way it drives.
As for who wins this showdown, well, ultimately he says that the S2000 is the one he’d like to drive away with the most, having the best combination of on- and off-track performance. He admits, though, that everyone’s a winner and that any advantage one has is easily overwhelmed by the fun that any driver in one of these cars is having in the moment.
Really, then, it comes down to which you desire the most and which is affordable. Whether or not you’ll be able to buy a cheap S2000 without frightening mileage is a bit of a question now given how high the values of low-mile versions are going. But if you can, you won’t be at a disadvantage compared to the latest crop of roadsters.