S2000 (AP1 / AP2)

Fifty Years, and a Question Honda Had Asked Before Honda's first sports car, the S500, appeared in 1963, then the S600 and S800. The S2000 was launched on 15 April 1999 to mark the company's fiftieth anniversary, and Honda's European material called it the successor to the S800 and the first front-engined, rear-drive Honda since it. The design study was the SSM, shown at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show and credited to Shigeru Uehara. The NSX had been Honda's attempt at the same problem a decade earlier from the opposite direction, and the two shared a roof: the S2000 was built at Takanezawa alongside the NSX.

An Engine Announced by Its Output per Litre Honda announced the engine on 23 February 1999, separately from the car, and led on specific output rather than power. The Japanese F20C made 250 PS from 1,997 cc - 125 PS per litre, which Honda called world-leading - while export cars were quoted at 240 PS at 8,300 rpm, about 120 PS per litre, against a 9,000 rpm limit. Honda's own wording is inconsistent about how wide the claim is: the American introduction release says the highest specific output of any normally aspirated production engine in the world; the powertrain release narrows it to any 2.0-litre one. Either way it stood until the Ferrari 458 Italia entered production in 2010 at roughly 126 hp per litre. The means were unexotic in isolation and rare together: VTEC on both camshafts switching near 6,000 rpm, fibre-reinforced metal bore liners in an aluminium block, forged pistons, and 11.7:1 compression in Japan against 11.0:1 abroad.

The High X-Bone Frame Honda published the structure as a technology in its own right the same day as the engine. Rather than reinforce a conventional open shell, the centre floor tunnel became the backbone of a structure tying the straightened side members, the sills and the central floor frame into an X on one horizontal plane, with diagonally braced bulkheads fore and aft of the cockpit. Honda claimed torsional rigidity equal to a closed body and bending rigidity better than either an open or a closed conventional one. It is why the car does not shake, and why the CR could later get a usable gain from one added brace.

AP1 to AP2 For 2004 the engine was stroked from 84.0 mm to 90.7 mm, giving 2,157 cc as the F22C1. Peak power stayed at 240 hp but arrived 500 rpm earlier and torque rose to 162 lb-ft 1,000 rpm earlier, Honda claiming a 4 to 10 per cent gain between 1,000 and 8,000 rpm. The cost was the rev limit, cut to 8,000 rpm on rising piston speed. Gears one to four shortened 4 per cent and fifth 1 while sixth lengthened 2, on an unchanged 4.100 final drive. Wheels went to 17 inches, front spring rate rose 6.7 per cent and rear fell 10, the rear bar came down from 27.2 to 25.4 mm, the roll centre was lowered and rear static toe moved from -0 deg 19 min to -0 deg 10 min. European AP2 cars kept the 2.0-litre.

The Snap-Oversteer Question The reputation is not folklore, but it is more specific than the shorthand. The AP1's rear geometry gives substantial toe-out in droop, so when the rear unloads - a mid-corner lift, a crest, hard trail-braking - the rear wheels steer outward just as the tyres carry least load. Specialists recommend at least 3 to 4 mm of static toe-in on an AP1, and kits exist to reverse it. Honda's 2004 material is the strongest evidence the company agreed: it lists more gradual fall-off at the limit and reduced sensitivity to disturbances among that year's gains, and the changes ran to roll centre and rear toe, not merely spring rates. Against that, Larry Webster has said he found the tail basically impossible to provoke.

CR, and the End The CR was shown at New York in April 2007 and sold for 2008 and 2009. Honda quoted a reduction in coefficient of lift of about 70 per cent with the hardtop off and 80 per cent with it on. Springs went from 4.75 to 7.0 kg/mm front and 4.88 to 6.2 kg/mm rear, damping up 65 and 40 per cent, with larger bars, a 13.8:1 rack and a brace across the well the roof had used. Sales fell from 2006 and collapsed in 2008; Honda announced on 27 January 2009 that build would stop that June, and the successor was abandoned.

The engine is durable and the chassis is not fragile, so the fault list is specific rather than long. AP1 cars burn oil - a quart per 1,500 miles is described as normal by one guide and as ring-tolerance wear by another - and the same engines up to mid-2002 carry the oil-feed banjo bolt arrangement associated with high-rpm oil starvation and cylinder scoring, revised during 2002. AP1 intake valve retainers can crack after a mechanical over-rev, which is why a preventative retainer service exists; the F22C1 received upgraded retainers and does not need it. Wheel bearings fail and are not cheap. Timing-chain tensioner wear announces itself as a high-pitched rattle. Second and third gear synchronisers wear with hard shifting and old fluid, and AP2 gearboxes have a documented tendency to jump out of second, fourth or sixth. Clutch master and slave cylinders leak. Differential bearings whine. Radiator end tanks crack with age. Spark plugs back out and axle nuts loosen, so torque values want checking. Soft tops tear behind the driver's head and the plastic rear window fogs and cracks. Dashboards on 2006-onward cars bubble and blister. Recall history is light: NHTSA lists two 2000-model-year seat-belt campaigns, a 2004 tail-lamp non-compliance, an owner's-manual campaign, and a 2013 brake-booster recall covering 2006-2007 cars built between January and November 2006.

Establish which car it is before anything else. AP1 and AP2 are separate propositions, the European AP2 keeps the 2.0-litre while North American and Japanese AP2s do not, and Type V, Type S and CR are all market-restricted, so a badge alone settles nothing. A genuine CR has the aluminium hardtop, the rear body brace behind the seats, the 13.8:1 rack, the lower spherical shift knob and Alcantara trim; replicas built from an accessory hardtop and a bodykit are common enough that the interior and the brace are worth checking directly. Honda fit and finish is the best crash detector available: uneven panel gaps at the bonnet or boot, mismatched paint, and missing VIN stickers on fenders, hood, radiator support and boot all point one way, and salvage titles are not rare on this model. Take the oil level and the service history together, since AP1 consumption is normal enough that a car with no top-up record has either been watched or has not. Listen for a high-pitched buzz from a worn chain tensioner, and drive firmly through every gear on and off throttle listening for pop-out of second, fourth or sixth. Check compression against roughly 240 psi. Inspect the soft top behind the driver's head where it tears, and the plastic rear window for fogging and cracking. On a 2006-onward car look at the dashboard for bubbling or blistering. Factory hardtops are scarce and priced accordingly. Mileage matters less than the record of what was done at it.

As of August 2026, classic.com records an average recorded sale of $50,659 across 503 tracked Honda S2000 listings with 56 cars advertised, and a market benchmark of $29,652 that the site scopes to the AP1 rather than to the model as a whole - the gap between the two is a difference of scope, not a contradiction. The tracked range as of August 2026 runs from $6,600 for a 2000 car in September 2022 to $118,900 for a 2008 CR in September 2025. The CR is tracked separately and trades in a different market: as of August 2026 its benchmark stands at $76,602 on a falling trend against an average sale of $79,336, with results between $23,500 in April 2024 and $132,000 for an 8,000-mile 2008 car in January 2026. Ordinary AP1 and AP2 cars sit in broadly the same band as each other; the CR carries a multiple over both, and the falling CR trend line suggests the six-figure results were reached by a handful of exceptional cars rather than by the variant. Delivery-mileage examples form a third category: Broad Arrow sold a 42-mile, never-registered 2000 car for $95,000 including buyer's premium on 12 March 2025, reported at the time as a probable public-auction record for an AP1, against an owner who had wanted $150,000 for it in 2020.