Honda S2000

// £5,000–£17,000 6,000rpm and thereÕs 3k still to go YouÕll be travelling backwards at this point

Who doesn’t like a 2.0-litre, 240bhp, 9,000rpm screamer of an engine that also had – at one time – the most satisfying gearbox action in existence. I would use the term “like a rife-bolt” at this point, but the cliche police would shoot me with a prechambered round. Manufactured for a decade between 1999 and 2009, the S2000 is a two-seat roadster that made Honda look cool: mental engine, razored responses, slick looks and the kind of handling that was joyous, right up to the point that you exited stage hedge and smeared yourself across a ploughed feld. Snappy? Yes. The pendulum snap-back of a returning-to-straight S2000 is legendary, a bit like being in a waltzer at the fair, and approximately 20 per cent too fast for either a) the steering rack or b) the human mind to comprehend. Many have been found much further down the road from the actual bend where the crash was initiated, a story told by swervy tyre marks from which you can still hear the panicked, ghostly echoes of the driver screaming: “I’ve got it!” Crump. Tinkle. But it’s a cracking car to drive, even in 2018, and likely to end up with classic status simply because it is a challenge to hustle – even if a lot of that is down to the car’s lack of torque and appetite for revs. Not much happens below 7,000rpm, which is when most cars are drawing the curtains and dimming the lights, but the VTEC system isn’t swapping cam lobes until 6k, so you have to press on. Don’t forget, this was a car that didn’t get Vehicle Stability Assist until the year before it went out of production, though… see above. There’s not much to match it these days – super-high revving VTEC Hondas are out of fashion, which makes us like this one even more.

One we found... Unmodified, low (47k) miles, £12k, hard top included. Possibly only chosen because it’s in the rarer Indy Yellow.