as i have read there were 2591 produced in 08. im looking at an 08 with a VIN of JHMAP21458S002600, which says to me ..... this was the 2600 produced.
can some one please tell me whats up?
​​​​​​​thank you

 

On the wikipedia page it shows 85 sold in 2010 and 2 in 2011 with an asterisk saying those #'s were residual inventory. My guess would be that many of those were 2008 cars if the numbers listed are by units sold.

 

I believe those are only US and not worldwide production numbers.

 

Yes, there were only 2,591 *production* cars made for the U.S. in the '08 model year (MY08). However, the highest MY08 VIN is 2608. That's because there are 17 "invalid" VINs, corresponding to units that, for a variety of possible reasons, were never released to the U.S. Typically these were pre-production units used to prove out new features, but could also be units that catastrophically failed quality checks, were lost in transit, etc. The biggest "discrepancy" in production total vs. highest-VIN occurred, as you'd expect, in model year 2000 (MY00), the first model year. There are 59 "invalid" MY00 VINs, including 42 of the first 51 possible VINs. The first valid "production" VIN for MY00 is #0027 (a NFR car). Since Honda "refreshed" the S2000 every two years, the even-numbered model years typically have more invalid VINs (since pre-production units would be needed to prove out the changes). In fact there are only four model years for which VIN #0001 is valid: MY01, MY05, MY07, and MY09. Across the entire 10-year U.S. production run, there are exactly 200 "invalid" U.S. VINs. (That is, if you add up the highest production VIN #s from each model year, you get 67,060; but of those, only 66,860 are valid.)

The MY08 case is interesting in that, of the 17 invalid VINs, only the first four VINs (0001-0004) are obviously "pre-production" units. The remaining 13 invalid VINs are cases occurring between VINs 0538 and 2270. If these were all "quality rejects", it would represent a shockingly high percentage of that year's total production: consider, for example, that just TWO of the 8,921 possible MY05 VINs are invalid! So what was going on in MY08? It probably won't surprise you that the first 9 of those 13 invalid VINs fall precisely at the beginning or the end of a run of CRs, while the last three of the 13 are a *consecutive* set at the end of a run of Grand Prix White cars. Recalling that ONLY the U.S. received the CR trim, it would certainly appear that some very influential folks managed to get their hands on 13 additional CR examples that were diverted from the official production run. These would likely have come with very strong "strings attached" (no-resale agreements, etc.). On the plus side, it means the world was probably graced with another 13 (actually up to 17!) S2000 CRs.

Cheers!

 

Its honestly probably more likely just internal Honda cars for various marketing, PR, museum reasons that don't eat into the low number of production CRs. I know HPD had a couple CRs, many were given out to journalists and media outlets. So while there are likely extra CRs out there they would have a VIN you couldnt register on the street and would require a manufacturer license plate.

 

^I think we're mostly saying the same thing, except it's odd to me that there would be so many invalid VINs sprinkled throughout the production year. Certainly, *before* regular production started, those very first few invalid VINs could/would have been media/PR cars. In fact, more than half of all the invalid S2000 VINs are in the single digits or low double-digits of model-years that had big changes ('00,'02,'04,'06,'08). But in general, American Honda used regular-production cars for its press fleet, museum pieces, training centers, corporate employees, dealer VIPs, etc. Those were given "CVA" window stickers ("Corporate Vehicle Administration"), but they still show up as valid production VINs in Honda's database. (Even the two cars that the NHTSA destroyed in crash tests had valid production VINs: MY02 #8694 & MY03 #1383). When the recipient of a CVA car is done with it, it can be sold to the public as an ordinary used car -- a few have even turned up on BaT.

So my suspicion is that CVA wasn't an option for many of the VIPs who wanted a CR: perhaps they lived overseas and wouldn't be able to register a new car manufactured for the U.S. market. Or perhaps (though less likely), they were able to get their CR custom-built for their market (e.g. RHD, JDM/EDM indicators, etc.), which in turn meant that the car could not be sold new in the U.S... Regardless, I'd be curious to learn the fate of those "invalid" MY08s.