Honda S2000 Trivia & Fun Facts: What You Probably Didn't Know About the 9,000 RPM Roadster Honda Built for Its 50th Birthday (Trivia & Fun Facts: Cars & Trucks)

Honda turned fifty and built itself a present with no automatic gearbox, no turbocharger and no glovebox.

Honda Motor Co. was incorporated on 24 September 1948. Fifty years later it was the largest engine maker on earth by unit volume, it had just come out of a decade of Formula One dominance, and it made its money in family saloons and small SUVs. What it built to mark the anniversary was a two-seat rear-drive roadster with a four-cylinder engine that revved to nine thousand — 240 horsepower from 1,997 cubic centimetres, the highest specific output of any naturally aspirated production engine in the world. It held that record for roughly a decade, and the car that finally took it away was a Ferrari.

Ninety verified multiple-choice questions across ten themed parts cover the whole of it: the sixties roadsters with motorcycle chains driving the rear wheels; the Tokyo show concept that became the production car; the engine that needed both camshafts on VTEC to do what it did; the chassis laid out by the engineer who had led the NSX; and the day in August 2009 when it stopped, with no successor.

Inside:

240 horsepower from two litres — and the record it held for about a decade Why the engine sits entirely behind the front axle line, and what that does to the balance The snap-oversteer reputation: what was real, what was not, and what Honda changed in 2002 What changed when the AP2 arrived with 2,157 cc and lost 800 rpm Type V, Type S and the Club Racer — 699 built of a planned 2,000 Score Your S2000 Knowledge, from Heard the VTEC to Owns One Every load-bearing claim was checked against at least two independent sources. Where respectable sources disagree, the answer says so rather than quietly picking the tidier number.

Three things most retellings get wrong: the redline and the rev limiter are not the same number. The car most people call twitchy was changed for 2002, and the change was to the suspension geometry, not the electronics. And the F20C's record was not most power per litre ever — it was most power per litre of any naturally aspirated engine you could buy in a road car.

An independent, unofficial, complete and standalone volume in the Trivia & Fun Facts — Cars & Trucks series.