So today I was lucky enough to be driving a 2004 Honda s2000 in Berlina Black w/ 24,000 miles on the clock and it was such a nice day out too. I must say, my opinion of this car truly changed after having adequate seat time in one. I drove one quite a while ago and was not impressed but now after significant time with it, wow what a great car. This car more than proved it self in the twisties, at high speeds and low. It flows so well and is so well mannered, stable and confidence inspiring no matter what they digi speedo reads (you know what I mean). I just really loved this car. There where however a couple things I noticed, they may be normal but they may not be...

Potential bad:

-Some times at idle, at a stop light in neutral without my feet even on any pedal it would give me a random stall, low rpm blip. Enough to make me wonder, not every stop and it lasted a second or so. One of those ugh wtf was that type deals.

-The car had a knock if it was turned off and restarted... kind of a seconds worth of what eleanor sounded like in gone in sixty seconds when it wouldnt start... it sounded choked.

-The tires in the rear did not match the ones in the front. I forgot what they were specifically but in the rear they where Yokohama directional tread and in the front they looked like all season tires at best. Both had next to new tread but clearly NOT the same type of tire and I wonder if that contributed to the "weird" feeling it had when pushed to the limit in the S turns... almost felt like it was pushing in the front, sponge like feeling? No?

-I don't know if it is me just not being used to the car but it is weird having such a high strung motor, you feel like youre killing it even driving normal because it is so loud and even at low speed in low-mid gear the revs are always high.

Overall I loved this car... Just my 2 cents.

PIC: Not the exact car obviously I hijacked the pic, but for all you s2000 owners that don't know what the car looks like

 

1. The idle issues are pretty common and are usually associated with heat soak or faulty\dirty sensors... in other words.. it should be a relatively quick and cheap fix.

2. The knock you were hearing is probably associated with the idle issues and is probably somewhat normal in such a high compression engine. Less than 91 octane can cause this as well.

3. Crappy tires in the front would most definitely give a spongy under steer feel to the car.

4. The high sprung motor is a little hard to get used to. Luckily for me I have had cheaper but very similar Honda engines (B16A) in the past. These things can really take a beating, they are designed to be revved high and driven hard.

 

I love that last line u typed. Lord knows we s2000 owners forget what our car looks like as soon as we lose visual site of it!!! Thank you for that pic to remind me again...of course, I could've just stepped out to my garage and imagined my car in black. jk...

 

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What a nice lawn!

 

That's exactly what the feeling was, a spongy understeer... the car stuck very well but it could have been better I am sure with matching tires up front. These things had 4X4 meat on em!