TL;DR: I bought an s2000 for a fun summer car and then threw some upgraded tires and brakes on it and tracked it when my evoX broke.
Previous project threads:
Project Valent9 - track day tool
BeaterX, 600whp of DD fun!
Truck stuff, VW Danger Wagon
Evo8, BBK, 400+whp on alky
So it's official: as of yesterday I have spent one full year living and breathing life with a Honda. A *stupid* honda. I have grown to call this whip this because it is just *stupid* how much I like driving it. Here's how this thing looks today, exactly 1 year of ownership...I'll be honest, it's been beaten to death, brake and garage dust everywhere, and is pretty basic given the time that's gone into it:
After 13 years of owning heavily modified turbocharged/all-wheel-drive Mitsubishi products, I decided I wanted a convertable. I went immediately to 2 choices: a Porsche Boxster, BMW Z3, and Honda S2000. I had a budget of around $10,000 so I was looking for 2005-and-older, higher-mileage options with good maintenance records...I thought about a 3000GT VR4 or a Eclipse GST Spyder as solid options as well but price and the pending maintenance requirements and the drive to try something TOTALLY NEW (to me) pushed me towards the boxster and s2000...and then the fond memories of Kracka (Chris Hughes) and his black AP1 S2000 and stunning 'its just a honda' attitude really made the s2000 an obvious choice.
Look at how *horrible* that paint was after a 20-minute buff job
One day, Hughes was having lunch with one of his car buddies down in Dallas and that guy brought his co-worker. As conversation went on the coworker gentleman told the two about how he was about to trade in his old honda for a shiny new jeep! Turns out this guy was the single owner of a red, 2001 S2000 that he had daily driven for most of its life. It had 164,000 miles on it and he admitted that he didn't drive it much anymore. He was extremely keen on simply trading it in towards the new jeep and keeping his life simple. After Hughes took a closer look at it, I quickly offered him $500 over his trade-in offer (with tax incentives figured in) and we drafted a purchase agreement for me to buy the car for $6400 as-is. It had pretty bad sun faded paint and there was some minor damage to the seat but the engine ran great and the convertable top was in great shape as it had been replaced *twice* in the 15 years he owned it. Tires had some tread on them, that's all I really cared about.
Cruisin with da big boys
After what felt like an eternity, maybe 3-4 weeks of waiting for this guy to buy is damn precious Jeep, Hughes took delivery of the car, did vtec things (as much as you can have when you own a C7 corvette) for a few days and then brought the car to the local honda dealership for a look over.
Mandatory Dunkin Donuts stop somewhere in....kansas?
MitsuStyle.com Spring 2015 Cruise: time for fun!
This was mid april 2015, and we quickly hatched a plan for the upcoming MitsuStyle.com Spring Cruise: scheides purchased a $94 one-way ticket to Dallas for the Thursday before the cruise. We grabbed some bad-ass BBQ @ Mike Anderson's and then some tacos with Julie (Chris' gf), took a nap, and hit the road sometime around midnight Thursday or 1am Friday. We met up with a few of the Dallas locals that had decided to join us for the MitsuStyle Cruise and bombed towards Minneapolis. I was a small fish cruising with some pretty big sharks: a GTR, Supercharged Camaro, C7 Corvette, heavily modified evo9, a new v8 mustang, and me in my baby honda.
With AssHanson
Somewhere in SW Wisconson/NE Iowa
We picked up Andrew AssHanson in DesMoines and then landed in Minneapolis around 5pm, I stopped at my house quickly and Andrew and I hit up a few bars in NE Minneapolis with a bunch of other friends....this turned into an all-night bender and suddenly it was 3:30am, we were having breakfast at Flameburger, and we had to be at the meet-up spot at 8am.
Did I mention I shipped a bunch of stuff via Amazon Prime to Hughes for the trip up? Bluetooth on factory stereo, elastic straps for the top, hardwire kit for my ValentineOne, and a glovebox organizer kit from modifry.com
...oh and a chicken head mask
Needless to say, the next morning was ROUGH but we made it. It was cold (like 40°F) and overcast and I decided to just drop the top to show off the new whip to the others at the meet-up spot. As we departed, I decided to crank the heat and keep the top down, bundle up a bit and just see how it went. Well I then discovered how GREAT this car is at top-down cool-weather cruising and spent the next 8 hours that day and the entire 8 hours the next day getting a sunburn on the way home.
Jilly (RIP) and Turbo absolutely love cruising with the top down!
I was hooked, this car is awesome! It will make a REALLY great 's2k day' (those days that are clear blue sky, super beautiful and warm, etc) and maybe I'll drive it a few times inbetween for the hell of it. Long story short, I ended up putting ***9000*** miles on this car during the summer of 2015...we had some exceptional weather and I took advantage of it every stinking day I could!
Parked at work.
What happened between then and now? Stay tuned....
The new stable...380whp evo9, stock s2k, and 600whp beaterX/evoX
Preview of things to come:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuNmnKsH02Y&hd=1