S2000 how many made

As it turns 20 this year, what lessons does the Honda S leave behind? This particular example is a CR model belonging to Alex Soo of Vancouver, who also has a standard S he purchased more than a decade ago.

However, though it wears numbers on the upper left of its windshield, fresh from a session at the Ridge , this car is not purely a track rat. Nor is it a garage queen. Soo regularly participates in local club events, including an annual drive to Mount Baker, and runs up through the tunnels of the Fraser Canyon in BC.

Gaze closely at the paintwork on the nose of this dagger-like little roadster, and you'll find the tell-tale pitting of a car that is loved, but also used. This January, at the Tokyo Auto Salon, Honda paid tribute to both the S and owners like Soo with an updated early car it dubbed the 20 th Anniversary S prototype.

Prepared by Honda Access, the company's parts and accessories division, this S benefited from new bodywork with claimed genuine aerodynamic benefits, a retuned suspension, 17 inch staggered fitment wheels, and an upgraded audio system. All these parts will be available to S owners looking to refresh their car for years to come. As with Mazda and their MX-5 restoration catalogue, and Nissan and their Skyline heritage parts , Honda is honoring a hero from its past.

The sad part about this tribute is, unfortunately, that it's probably an admission that Honda will never build something like the S again. This car may be labelled a prototype, but there's nothing to suggest that anything new is in the pipeline. In fact, if you look at Honda's current lineup, largely reliant on turbocharging and shared platform manufacturing, the company's products seem to be moving further away from the high-revving heritage that inspired the S in the first place.

Last year, I was lucky enough to sample some of that original screaming intensity by way of a very rare Canadian-market Honda S The company's anniversary in the US began in with the proto-Civic Honda N , but a few Ss made their way to Canada first via a handful of motorcycle dealerships.

The S is a tiny car crammed with every idea Soichiro Honda could dream up. It has a quad-carbureted, cc engine that features double overhead cams, makes 57hp at rpm, and redlines at over 10, rpm. Keeping the thing tuned properly is ordinarily a nightmare, but owner Mike Gane is a retired electrical engineer with the kind of mind that welcomes mechanical challenges.

Naturally, he also owns an S The frenetic little S is something of a cross between a hummingbird and a rollerskate. It flits across the landscape in a fury of engine revolutions, not exactly speedy, but poised on its fully independent suspension, and pivoting on its skinny tires. This effervescence was the spirit Honda's engineers wanted to recapture for the company's 50 th anniversary. The concept took the conventional front-engined, rear-wheel-drive layout of Honda's ancestral S-cars, and mixed in a five-speed automatic gearbox taken from the NSX, and a five-cylinder, valve engine that spun to a projected rpm.

The production S that launched four years later made the SSM look unambitious. The styling had been refined by Honda designer Daisuke Sawai into a classic and angular shape that continues to age gracefully. The headlines, however, were all about that powertrain.

S CRs, like-for-like condition and mileage, generally sell for about double what a normal S will. Of the produced, Berlina Black is the most common and sells for a bit less than the other three colors. Are there any desirable options to look out for on standard cars?

For , there really weren't any options other than colors; just dealer accessories such as front lip, rear spoiler, and the factory hard top. In your opinion, what does the future hold for the S market?

Will values continue to rise? I think the standard cars will slowly continue to rise over time along with inflation and increased interest as a modern classic. Because they made so many of them, I don't think there's going to be any huge spike in value. Many of these were bought as weekend cars, so there are a lot of nice ones hiding out in people's garages.

The CRs are a different story. It will take a bit of time for them to surpass Acura Integra Type R numbers, but they will. What has caused a fairly modern, series-production Honda to become so collectible?

I think as the auto industry moves further away from lightweight, simple, naturally aspirated, high-revving, manual-transmission sports cars, buyers are realizing how great the S was for its time and still is today.

It's rare to see what is a regular production car go up in value so quickly, and I think that's because the S offers not only a "classic" or collector experience for some serious Japanese car fans but also a legitimate alternative to what's on the market in terms of new sports cars. Honda will probably choose a different route than a re-engineered turbo-four, but one source at Honda mentioned that the Japanese firm is considering an S model with around horsepower.

This would be a big increase from the previous S, which came with horsepower in its most potent configuration. Although the old S was restricted to a manual, Honda will probably offer an automatic as well, just like Mazda does for the MX-5 Miata. A modern tribute to Honda roadsters from the s, like the S, S, and S, the S arrived in for the model year.

A front-engined, two-door roadster with a rear-wheel-drive layout, the S immediately took on the highly popular Mazda MX-5 and the third-generation Toyota MR2. When it broke cover in , the U. By comparison, the NB-generation Mazda MX-5 developed only horsepower and pound-feet in its most powerful iteration. The S was more powerful than the Mazdaspeed version too, rated at just horses and pound-feet.

Mazda redesigned the Miata in , but the NC version did not generate more than horsepower and pound-feet of twist. A facelift introduced in increased torque to pound-feet, but output remained locked at horsepower for the U. Following several successful years with more than 10, units delivered per year globally to , sales of the roadster began dropping dramatically in , and the crisis made things worse for the nameplate.

With only around 4, examples sold in , the S was discontinued in June Overall, Honda sold , roadsters, around 66, of which were delivered to the United States. Source: Forbes.