By John C. Naderi
The original S2000 dropped in 1999 as a 2000 model to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Honda. And what a celebration it was because eight years later, the upcoming 2008 S2000 CR does no better in terms of power output. This is not only a testament to the advanced engineering of a model that appeared almost a decade ago, but also the reason why the special edition CR is not adorned with one of those lusty red Rs.
Honda did not give the CR--which stands for Club Racer--a Type-R or even a Type-S badge because those designations are reserved for cars with substantial performance increases over their base model brethren. The DOHC 16-valve F22C in the S2K has already been tuned to the ragged edge as many an aftermarket tuner can attest to after struggling to improve upon the 237 little ponies Honda has wrung from this manic mill.
But this is not to say that the CR doesn't offer a little more sporty spice than the base S2K. Honda, being Honda, found other ways to pump up the performance of its already hyper roadster, most notably by lowering the weight and upping the handling. Honda claims the CR was designed for a customer who wants to drive a car to the track, drive it on the track and then drive it home from the track. We had no doubt in this claim before we even fingered its little red starter button--all because of the engineer in charge of the CR.
Shigeru Uehara is a senior chief engineer at Honda, better known as the father of the NSX. In the late `90s when you were livin' la vida loca and stocking up on canned goods to prepare for the Y2K scare, Uehara-san was hard at work preparing his own Y2K. Uehara-san is on the eve of his retirement now, but his swan song is the CR. "Twenty of my 36 years with Honda have been spent designing sports cars. Think of the CR as a farewell gift from me."
After bombing the CR through multiple strafing sessions at Mid-Ohio's undulating 2.4-mile road course, we can attest that this is the best present we've received since our G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip. We conducted our own S2K challenge with a base '07 model, the revised '08 base model and finally the saucy CR. Throughout the entire course, the CR just felt more planted with no unsettling traits. The CR's greater cornering stability was most pronounced going through Mid-Ohio's Turn 8 (a.k.a. "Madness"), a third-gear left that changes drastically from uphill to downhill just at the apex. At this apex point, where most cars get light,the '07 and '08 base model S2Ks would also get loose although never to a tighty-whitey staining point; just enough to require some steering correction and throttle modulation. And the CR? It never lost its composure through this corner. Let's see how Uehara-san and crew worked their magic.
It should be noted that the '08 base model S2000 is improved with revised spring and damper tuning. We appreciated this firmer suspension setting on the track, although we weren't able to pit both base models against each other on a street drive for one of our dreaded manboob-jiggling evaluations. As improved as the base '08 S2K is compared to the '07, so is the CR when compared to the standard '08 model.