Cut the kid a break.

Would you tell Fernando Alonso or Kimi Raikkonen that they are too young to drive an S as a teen? He stated the races snowmobiles, and they give you a real sense of speed, and mistakes can be quite deadly in snow mobiles.

I'd always opt for a new S2000 over used one, unless it's from a private party and is totally mint and bonafide. The range you want to spend is on the cusp of the price of a new one, and it's worth the extra little jump to a new one. You'll have the color you want, it's new, and no stories...

If I lived in a snow laiden area, I'd get an STi, but the S2000 is much more of a chick magnent and that's important when you're young.

 

Im 17 and have a 2003 S2000, also a 2002 Wrx for the winter. Pay 319 a month for the S2k insurance and 190-200 or so for the Wrx i think. Wrx is way different than the S2k, if you think an S2k compares to the Wrx your way wrong. No screwin around or second chances in the S2k. Zero forgiveness..

 

Steve is right, a good teenage driver is an oxymoron. Teenagers lack experience and judgement......and NO you werent a good driver when you were a teenager, you only thought you were. People should ease their ways into higher performance cars.....The kid who started this post totalled his WRX and thats a pretty good indicator. Stick to a nice car that is reliable, and save us all higher interest rates.

 

jeez, I used to think I was a bad-ass driver when I was 17-23. Then I wrecked my M3. Finally learned how to drive a RWD car properly by autocrossing and HPDE at the track with my Porsche 944, BMW M3, Mazda Miata, and Honda S2000. Now I'm in my late 20's and despite running circles around everything but a 911 Turbo on the track with my M3, I still feel like I have a lot to learn about driving.

You already have a Jetta as your beater. If your heart is set on the RX-7, you should get that instead of the S2000. Use the Jetta when the RX-7 is down.

 

Got a 2001 for $19,500 with 23500K on 10/04 at no reserve ebay auction. Runs great, no problems so far at 26k. Bone stock , female owned California car with some tread left on the stock front tires that didn't last much longer.
S2000's eat tires and insurance is $115 as month and I'm 40 but live in traffic hell metro area so figure that into your cost.
My only regret is on 2002 up you get a glass window. Plastic bites.

My advice go to CarMax and drive a few different cars -SLK, BMW Z3 , audi TT , Miata, Cobra and you'll appreciate what the S2000 is and is not. It's a bang for the buck roadster with Honda reliablity. Add a supercharger and you got a poor mans Ferrari.

Much easier to drive, fast or slow, than my old super charged Mustang 5.0 and totally different.
S2000's are sweet handling cars with awesone brakes, good safety features and nice high speed stablity and not much low end torque. Beware the rain. Light car + wide tires = hydroplane.

Warning ripping off 9k shifts is addictive and can induce the Michael Schumaker complex which results in speeding tickets. And yes women like the car.

 

From my recent experience, you can get a low mileage 2003 for less than 25k, if you're a little lucky. Lots of people are advising you to just get a new one, but if you're like me, that's not an option. Look for certified used cars from Honda dealers on cars.com and autotrader.com, they give you extra warranty coverage (unless you plan on modifying it, then forget the warranty). As the weather continues to get colder, dealers will have a harder time selling them.

 

Don't listen to Steve, he's an ass, I never see him do anything but put down others.
Steve, I'm willing to bet my brand new S that every last person driving in WRC or F1 was a better driver at 17 than you are right now. I've seen some crazy videos of McRae at a driving school when he was twelve that would put us all to shame.
Old people however (the kind who stop dead in the middle of the road before making a turn) are much more dangerous drivers IMO. They have so much experience that they become paralyzed by the fear of the million things that could happen...
Finally, I am neither old nor young (30) so you can save your young guy comments for someone else.

I say get the S, it's a great car. Since you live in the north east I'm sure snow has taught you how to deal with oversteer and I wouldn't be too concerned by it.

 

The WRX is the most forgiving car I can imagine. I've spent many hours behind the wheel of Subaru's AWD products and many hours behind the wheel of an S2000. The attitudes of the two cars have nothing in common.

If you find yourself sideways in the WRX, you'd have been backwards in the S2000. The WRX lives to be driven in a very aggressive and sloppy manner... that's how you go fast. The S2000 won't even tolerate sloppy driving, much less agressive sloppy driving, especially when the pavement is anything other than dry. Bluntly put, almost any hack can drive a WRX 9/10ths and get away with it but above average drivers have crashed S2000's at 8/10ths.

A great description I heard about the temperment of the S2000 goes like this:

When you make a little mistake, the Boxster taps you on the shoulder and says "Don't do that."
When you make a little mistake in the S2000, it slaps you in the face and says, " you!"

You know your abilities and your experience. Only you can judge if the S2000 is right for you. I just want you to be aware that while the cars have similar straight line performance numbers, they share nothing else in common. They require vastly different skills (and levels of skill) from their drivers and are built for vastly different venues.

 

Haha lots of funny posts.
Of course there are good 17 year old drivers. What people are saying is that most 17 yr olds AREN'T....there is a REASON insurance costs more if you are a teenager...it's called statistical analysis.
Becoming a better driver comes with EXPERIENCE which is gained over TIME. Kind of like how a person who's played basketball everyday for 10 years will be better than someone playing everyday for 1 year (unless you are LeBron James).

 

nvm quote , I read your post wrong

anyways

yes with more time and experience comes better skill etc..

but saying all teenage drivers 'suck' is blatently wrong..

I've seen more idiots [soccer moms, mid-life cirsis dads who think the 15sec minivan is some great handling corvette] almost kill me, because they feel they can ride 2 inches from my bumper with thier 4000lb minivan in icy conditions....and then realize they cant stop for shit once i need to make a turn...

man NY drivers are SO SMART , and older ones are instantly better than any teenage driver


don't even get me started on SUV drivers here, who think top heavy SUVs with crap brakes are suddenly capable of 70+mph in 55mph zones when its icy as just because they have 'AWD' ...oh man....

age =/= skill