If you’ve ever seen Ridley Scott’s movie Gladiator, you’ll remember how Joaquin Phoenix’s Emperor Commodus uses thumb signals to decide a fighter’s fate. But since the movie’s release in 2000 some historians have argued that Scott’s depiction of the signals – a thumbs-up to spare a gladiator, thumbs-down to finish him – was inaccurate, and that the hand positions would have been the other way around.
Which makes total sense when you see this TikTok clip from user marlie.honodel of a Honda S2000 pirouetting into the foliage only moments after receiving an appreciative thumbs-up from the driver he passes in the middle lane of a freeway. The yellow Honda is in such a mess afterwards that the driver will probably be using his own thumb for the next few weeks to hitch rides.
At first sight the opening moments of the video don’t look like there’s much danger present. True, the road surface is damp and the S2000 – particularly early ones like this car – have a reputation for snappy oversteer. But the driver is travelling slowly and in a straight line as he passes the camera car. What can possibly go wrong?
Related: Canceled Honda S2000 Facelift Proposal By Strosek Looks More Like A Second Generation
@marlie.honodel REPOSTING SINCE MY CREDITS TO MY VIDEO ARENT BEING POSTING !!!! #s2k #s2kcrash #s2000 #crash #yellows2000 #wetroads #carcrashed #s2kcrash ♬ original sound – mar🫶🏼
Plenty. An early aughts Honda S2000 might have had half as many liters, cylinders and pound-feet as a Ford Mustang GT of the same vintage, but we can hear the driver downshift and lean into the gas as he closes on the car ahead of him, and that’s enough to send the SK2’s tail sliding to the left. The driver valiantly piles on some opposite lock, but neither that or the giant rear wing and all the downforce its brochure blurb probably promised, can save the Honda from a date with the green stuff at the side of the road.
The car spins 180 degrees as it cross two lanes of traffic and actually travels along the verge backwards, looking for a split second as if the driver might just get away with it. No such luck. It then performs another 180, destroying its rear bodywork and ripping at least one wheel from the rear axle. We already know that the owner couldn’t make a save, but do you think a bodyshop can, or is this S2000 destined for the crusher?