What's good S2000 owners.

Name's just as it's spelled out in my ID, albeit with spaces and capitalization when needed. What else should I write... I hail from the county of Orange, known as Orange county, which is no longer populated by vast expanses of idyllic orange vines, located in the state of Calinarnia, located in the nation of states, once colonies, United.

I am to enter my first year of college after graduating from a school of high altitude earlier in the year. I do not know how to operate the contraption so commonly called a "manual-stick-shifter-transgender", yet am adamant that my father fetches me 2000 S's at a reasonable price. Daily, I labor away at my attempts to find a colleague so willing to teach me how to overcome this "gender-shifting" device, yet my attempts are met with a generous 2-5 likes on my facebook status.

I have been operating my mother's '02 Mitsubishi Montero Sport for about 9 months now, and very occasionally, my brother's '03 Nissan Altima. Both of these fine machines being automatic.

Upon hearing that my father would provide me with a car of my own over a year ago, I longed for a Silvia/240S-Sex of some sort. Soon after being shot down, I looked into 2013 Civic Si's and Mazda3's. However, as I was to embark on a trip to fulfill my conquest of the South Korean people from August to November, plans of conquest of the Californian roads in my own motor vehicle had to be postponed. Though I have absolutely no knowledge of what it is I must consider when handing over currency in exchange for personal transportationative technologies, I am on now a mission to acquire a Stallion2000 of the highest condition to terrorize the people of this county of oranges with my terrible driving skills and decision-making.

Hope to make only great memories with all of you.


EDIT: Upon looking back at this, I realized this is probably not the best first impresssion.

Anyways, I've been a big fan of cars since I was little. Well actually, it was dinosaurs first, but now it's cars. I used to be pretty stupid about cars and wanted to be a "professional" street racer when I was in elementary. Now I'm a little less stupid, but I still wouldn't call myself smart.

I got my license around March, and honestly, driving isn't so hard as much as SHARING the road with other drivers is (I thought it would come super naturally to me). But I'm sure I'll get better with time. Regarding my inability to drive stick, I've been watching a bunch of videos on how to drive stick like a socially-awkward-penguin, so I guess I "know" how to do it. I know one or two friends that have manuals, but I don't keep in touch with them so much these days.

 

Good luck in your search for your desired transportation, be sure to let us know what you find.
Levi

 

Welcome, Brian, please post pics of what ever you consider. Having driven manual since 1963 ( right after Moses parted the red sea)learning the S2K was a piece of cake. The more I drive the car the better that transmission is in MHO. Good Luck!!

 

This is not a first-car type of car. I've said it for over a decade and I'm still saying it now.

Learn on something else, get this car when you've got some experience under your belt and can appreciate it more. Your first car is a throwaway car and gauging from your lack of seriousness in this thread (assumption, sure) its safe to say you won't know how to take care of it.

/tough love

You likely won't give 2 sh!ts about good advice in here anyways so good luck on your search, and you're a lucky kid to have an S at your age if your parents/situation end up allowing you to own/drive one.

 

Welcome.

If you get one check out the link in my signature.

 

i totally agree. the s2000 is not a good first car

 

Thanks for the welcomes everyone.

Thanks for the tough love. What you need isn't always what you want. And yeah, my friends are all at school taking their finals while I'm sitting alone at home waiting for them to come back, so I've spent the last week or so reading/researching/lurking on these forums. To sum up what I've learned:

1. S2K's, especially AP1, are more oversteer-happy.
2. Lot's of newbies wrecking S2K's due to inexperience with RWD.
3. I'm a newbie.

And I thought about all those hours spent playing Forza since it's first incarnation. And I thought, "I just need to apply what I learned to the real world." But I realize 240HP in a car that light is not to be taken lightly on the public road, where there is nothing you can't hit with your car. The fact that I haven't learned how to drive a manual transmission doesn't help at all either.

The premises of my situation are as follow.

1. I admire beautiful, well-built, and fast cars.
2. My Dad literally told me, "Tell me whatever car it is that you want, and I'll buy it for you."
3. How am I gonna say no to that? So I told him I want an S2000.
4. He's the one paying the bills, so it's ultimately up to him.

 

Is your dad currently adopting? Seriously, that is an awesome offer.

I understand that the appeal of a sports car is hard to resist but with your dad telling you "Get whatever you want" I would pick something that is, in this order:

Pratical - you will probably have this car for quite a while. You will curse your choice every time you want to go to IKEA if you get a two seater with a small trunk. I am not saying it has to be a VAN but my Toyota Celica liftback was a godsend when I was in college. Great for moving everything I owned between apartments etc.

Reliable - The s2000 has this in spades, its a very good car from a reliablity standpoint, but so are a bunch of other things. The s2000 also uses up expensive tires which is fine if you dad will continue paying to maintain your car through college but might become dangerous if you cannot afford to replace them every 15-20k miles.

Comfortable - If you are going to be using this as your only car to get home for the weekend/holidays you will likely want something quieter, softer, and with a few more features than an s2000. Its a great car to drive highway 1 with but pretty sucky for driving roads like "the 5" in the summer etc.

Inexpensive - I would not spend more than 10,000 dollars on my first car. Chances are it will be street parked where it will be subject to much abuse from weather, bicyclists, thieves, etc.

Having said all that, I am not suggesting you buy something boring, I loved my little Celica, it only had 130hp but I thought it was fast, and it was a reasonably good looking too. It cost me only 3200 dollars and it lasted me for 6 years before I sold it...for 1800 dollars. I appreciated having it during college and it didn't bankrupt me. You can get something sporty but I would stick to something with under 200hp rather than over.

I would encourage you to look for a manual transmission though. In my mind driving stick has always kept me paying attention to the road. All of my cars have been manual. Hard to text when you need all 4 appendages to drive and that's a good thing.

Don't worry too much about picking up learning manual, its really not as hard as people make it out to be. Once you pick up the basic technique of getting it going and shifting the rest is just perfecting pedal modulation for smoother starts and shifts. getting going on hills take some time to learn but you can always use the handbrake until you get comfortable.

 

Pretty sure you wouldn't want to be adopted into my family hahaha. And yeah, my main two passions are music then cars. So it is pretty hard to resist

Practicality - I thought about the fact that I could only haul around only one other person, but hauling THINGS around never crossed my mind. Thanks for that. The college I'm going to is only 10 minutes away from my house so I won't have to be hauling things around... but you never know.

Reliable - Honda power. And is there a reason why you should replace them so often? Or is it because most S2K owner's can't resist punishing their tires from time to time...

Inexpensive - I actually don't have a garage either


Thanks for the info and advice too guys. I honestly don't think my dad will end up getting me an S2K anyways, but the little 5 year old in me keeps believing. haha.

 

The tire issue comes from the power and alignment of the car, and the fact that it calls for aggressive summer tires. That is not to say you couldn't put long lasting tires on it but what would be the point? Tires have the single greatest impact on the cars performance in handling, acceleration, and braking. Basically, if you can't afford to put the right rubber on it, you can't afford it.