Before I carry on with this I'd just like to say this occured at 6am this morning on a very quiet motorway and hence the only two lives at risk here were mine and the MR2 driver.

On my way to work this morning I pull onto the slip road for the motorway and a red MR 2 pulls in behind me, I've seen this car before, its not a standard UK MR2 its imported and tarted up a bit, I think its the JDM Turbo.

Anyway as we pull off the slip road onto the motorway I spot him behind me heading straight for the fast lane so I floor it and get in that lane too, this is from about 60 mph. Its perfectly straight road and I'm flooring it with smooth gear changes all the way upto 120mph and this MR2 is stuck to me like glue, he's even flashing his lights at me to suggest I pull over and let him through. At this point we encounter some traffic so I slow down (not a bad idea considering were doing 50mph over the speed limit at this point and thats licence loosing material). Once we get through the traffic I floor it again from about 70mph, this time I manage to get about 4 cars away from him but then he's sticking with me again and probably beginning to close on me.

This is the 1st time I've got into this sort of race and I initially thought it would be no contest but I'm now sat with my tail between my legs.

The moral of the story 'beware of MR2s in drag!'.

BTW: Anyone know how much power a JDM MR2 Turbo has?

 

If its the latest model it's 245 hp plus a good deal more torque than the S2K has. Weighs about the same as our car too. It's also a bit more aerodynamic than the S2K, so at speed it should be a bit quicker.

Of course, he could always throw an exhaust and a boost upgrade in there and make a lot more power. The 3SGTE motor is very strong.

Don't feel too bad :-)

UL

 

Don't feel too bad. I had a heavily modified MR2 eat me in my last car which was an NSX.

I think I had nightmares for about a week after that mainly because he would have paid about 25% of what I did for my car!

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bernie
[B]Don't feel too bad. I had a heavily modified MR2 eat me in my last car which was an NSX.

 

Jason, a local young vagabond had imported one of these with 500 BHP claim AT THE WHEELS, even if it was 500 BHP at the crank you can imagine its performance, it would drive in / out of my street with wooshes / whistles of turbo / blowoff valve , enormous exhaust and some of the widest rear tyres I've seen, it lasted 6 months and he blew the pistons through the sump .

I was surprised that I blew off a ESCORT COSWORTH from 80 to 150mph (on the clock) when he was going backwards , I suppose that was stock though.

 

Ok, its now 5 hours later and I'm still in a state of shock so I decided to find out more about the JDM MR2 Turbo. In standard form it puts out approx 220bhp so is evenly matched with the S2K, has far better torque than the S2K.

However I remember the last time I saw this car it didn't have the usual MR2 logo on the Rear it had MRD. After searching a few sites I stumbled across Mental Racing Developments who specialise in MR2 tuning and use this logo, they can tweak the car to 300bhp+.

They are also based in Liverpool and I'm in Warrington (about 15 miles away) so I'm now not feeling as bad as this was obviously a professionally tuned MR2 Turbo.

In future I'll pull over and let him fly by.

 

Any UK owners plan to modify their s2k. I guess all the mods are in Switzerland. My personal opinion is that it's not worth it because honda's are not special in europe.

Anyone seen pictures of the new 2002 Z3? It looks like the Z8. The M version is going to be much more expensive when compared to the S2000. They estimate the M version will produce 345BHP!

RL

UK

 

RL, I have slight MODS

Exhaust / header from MUGEN maybe when my exhaust goes,

Check-out http://www.tdi-plc.com, a UK company offering some MODS already on the S2000.

 

Paul,

theres no mention of an HP gain from the exhaust, is this purely cosmetic?

Having read the book by Dan Carney it becomes quite obvious that Honda tuned the car highly in the 1st place and hence 3rd party firms are not likely to extract much more HP without reverting to forced induction.

Cheers

Jason

 

UKjasonm, for more MR2 info, you may want to check out this MR2 message board: http://board.mr2pages.com/