Honda S2000

Honda's 50th-birthday present to itself was a 2.0-litre four that revved to 9,000 rpm and made 250 PS with no turbo — the highest specific output of any naturally aspirated production engine of its day. The AP1 wrapped the F20C in a high-rigidity X-bone frame with 50:50 weight distribution and a six-speed whose throw is measured in millimetres. It gave nothing away for free: below 6,000 rpm a polite roadster, past VTEC crossover a race engine with number plates.

The S2000 became the honest yardstick of the 2000s: autocross weapon, time-attack base, touge regular, and one of the great spec-racing chassis. Suki's pink AP1 in 2 Fast 2 Furious handed it mainstream fame it never asked for, while forums argued endlessly about snap oversteer that mostly punished sloppy inputs. Tuners largely left the F20C internals alone — you don't out-engineer 125 PS per litre cheaply — and turned to boost only when the tach stopped being enough.

Roughly 110,000 S2000s were built across both generations, but clean, stock AP1s are evaporating: crashed, modified, or squirrelled away by owners who know exactly what they have. The last mass-produced Honda roadster with a superbike redline is now a blue-chip analogue pick, with sub-10,000-mile cars brushing six figures at auction and driver-grade examples climbing steadily behind them. Nothing since — including Honda's own catalogue — has replaced it.