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Honda cooks up S2000 'Clubsport'
15 March 2007
Ever wondered what might result if Honda gave its S2000 the Type-R treatment? Well, you could be about to find out.
The Japanese marque has just confirmed that among the cars on its New York motor show stand in April will be a hotter version of its eight-year-old roadster; it'll be called the S2000 CR and, says Honda, will take the car's performance "to an entirely new level."
Official information on the more hardcore S2000 will be scarce until its unveiling on 4 April. All Honda has said about it so far is that it's "club racer-inspired," "aggressively tuned," and has been "engineered around the expectations and needs of Honda performance enthusiasts."
So how is Honda going to achieve the necessary added aggression? Given its preference of high-revving atmospheric engines over forced-induction ones, a turbocharger probably isn't on the cards. It's more likely that the company will apply its latest VTEC valve timing technology to the car's standard 237bhp 2.0-litre motor, which, allied to upgraded induction and exhaust systems, should boost headline power up beyond 260bhp.
Added to that will be power-to-weight ratio gains achieved through weight saving. Aluminium body panels, aluminium updates to the car's 'X-Bone' body structure, the removal of the car's air conditioning and part of its audio system, and the substitution of leather seats for lighter, manually-adjusted buckets, could save as much as 100kg from the 1260kg kerbweight.
All that means that, while the standard S2000 has a power-to-weight ratio of 188bhp per tonne, this more track-focused one could have as much as 225bhp per tonne. Special circuit-biased tyres, lighter alloy wheels and a stiffer chassis are also racing certainties.
The new S2000 CR is going on sale in the US this autumn. If it came to the UK – and there's no official word as yet that it will – it would almost certainly be badged S2000 Type-R.
One Honda UK spokesman we spoke said that the car wasn't yet part of the European product plan for the next 18 months. He did confirm, however, that all S2000s are built in the same factory in Tochigi, Japan, that the car has several years of production still to run before any replacement is due, and that a Type-R version would be a great way to inject some fresh dynamism into the mix later on.
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