More flexible, better balanced, still demonic

Honda S2000 - Short Take Road Tests - Car and Driver - November 2003

BY BARRY WINFIELD, PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID DEWHURST
November 2003

The 2003 version of the Honda S2000 recently won a comparison test (“The Blow Dryers,” August 2003) among such leading lights as the Porsche Boxster, BMW Z4, Nissan 350Z Touring, and Audi TT roadster. In case you hadn’t noticed, some of those cars are newer than the Honda is.

We have more bad news for those guys. There's a revised S2000 coming their way as a 2004 model, and it features a ton of improvements designed to neutralize the few criticisms we had about the old car.

Chief among these are changes to the engine to make the S2000 more flexible at low- and midrange revs without dulling the tumultuous rush at motorcycle-engine speeds that is this car's trademark. Honda did this by increasing the stroke by 6.7 millimeters, thereby bumping displacement from 1997 to 2157cc.

Both VTEC cam profiles were reconfigured, the compression ratio was raised a 10th (to 11.1:1), and the redline was dropped from a strident 8900 rpm to a merely maniacal 8000 rpm. The redline illuminates as a shifter light on the tidy new instrument cluster and then allows another 200 rpm before shutting off the fun.