There’s something almost taunting about the way a Honda S2000 climbs the rev range. That last 2000 rpm isn’t a crescendo. It’s a provocation. The intake sound hardens, the dash lights up like it’s sick of waiting, and everything tightens with the smug certainty of something overbuilt on purpose.
Back in the '60s, Honda was already building to this. The S600 and S800 redlined past 8500, chain-driven DOHC engines spun like dentist drills. Tiny roadsters. Screaming little time bombs. Jean-Marc, the owner of this S2000, puts it best: “In the 60s, it seemed completely insane.” It was, and what it wasn’t was a fluke. It was a forecast. The S2000 didn’t show up out of nowhere. It was the culmination of a thread Honda had been pulling on for decades. And when it landed, it doubled down.
Spinning an engine to 9000 rpm isn’t just about bravery. It’s mechanical violence contained by precision. Piston speeds creeping toward 25 meters per second. Valve float hovering on the edge of reality. Metallurgy that holds its breath and hangs on. Forged crank, lightweight rods, moly-coated skirts, oil squirters, and a valvetrain engineered to keep everything alive past 8000 when most motors are already on their knees. The oiling system has to keep pressure at full boil without foaming out, and the head has to flow. Really flow. Big valves, straight ports, and a compact combustion chamber that stays clean even at the edge. It’s built to breathe hard at redline and keep doing it, lap after lap. 120 horsepower per liter, naturally aspirated. No turbo. No supercharger. Just cam timing, tight tolerances, and nerve.
VTEC was a punchline once. We’d yell "VTEC yo!" out the window like a dare, half-laughing, half-hyped, acting like we didn’t like it. But we did. We absolutely did. Underneath the facade we were all jealous of power coming on like a light switch. Because once that crossover hit, around 6000 rpm, the engine dropped the act and showed its teeth.
It didn’t just work. It branded itself into memory. The S2000 became a legend not through speed, but sensation. It still haunts conversations today like it just rolled off the line. Not because of what it could do, but because of what it meant. That high-rpm hit rewired expectations of what a Honda could truly be.
But it wasn’t just that engine. The car had to keep up with it. The chassis needed to carry that 9000 rpm madness without flinching. Tight six-speed. Double wishbone suspension. A front mid layout that felt like a structural dare. Honda knew it had to be right, especially for a convertible. Jean-Marc talks about it like someone who’s lived with it: “Honda wanted to stiffen the chassis of the S2000 since it’s a convertible. So they fixed it by designing a cross shaped frame underneath.” Not just stiff for a drop top, but balanced too. “You end up with 50/50 weight distribution. Rear-wheel drive. Torsen differential out back. It’s planted, but it still wants to play.” It didn’t drive like anything in the showroom. It didn’t feel like something approved by a committee. It felt like someone slipped it through a crack in the bureaucracy.
Jean-Marc is obsessive in the way only someone who’s bled into the metal can be. “This is what clearly makes the difference with this,” he says. “When the others stop, it is when this one starts to go wild.”
It didn’t come from nowhere. “When I was sixteen, seventeen,” Jean-Marc says, “I was in an apprenticeship. I only went home on weekends, and every time, I had to work on my dad’s car. He picked it up from who-knows-where. For me, it was awful. I spent months with my hands in grease, Saturdays and Sundays, every week.”
In ‘99, the day he passed his driving test, his father opened a safe. “He opened this little lockbox and said, ‘You didn’t work for nothing. This one’s yours.’ That moment, for me, it was magic.”
It's no wonder Jean-Marc keeps coming back to his Honda. You don’t forget a story like that.
