Specialty File
If time is money, where does that leave horsepower? With a base price of $32,740, just one of the Honda S2000's 240 horses costs $136. Sounds to us as though horsepower is money, too. Case in point: Want even more power from today's most overachieving engine? Okay, bring more money. In the case of the Mugen S2000 we tested, expect to pay almost three times as much for each pony above the stocker, or $393 each — more than the cost of an ounce of gold.
Either Mugen is fleecing the hell out of its well-heeled customers or Honda's S2000 is so well maximized that extracting extra horsepower takes Herculean effort. Mugen, of course, claims the latter reason and cites a two-year design and testing program to come up with a series of parts that make meaningful performance improvements. Mugen, as an engineering and parts contractor to Honda, one of the world's finest engineering companies, did its homework, and the 15 horses Mugen added to the S2000 were some of the hardest-working we've ever tested.
The new engine parts are simple: There's a $1500 carbon-fiber airbox that inhales cool air from in front of the radiator; a stainless-steel header ($1300) and exhaust system ($1500); an engine computer ($1500); a low-temp thermostat ($69); and a high-pressure radiator cap ($29). The trick, according to Mugen, is managing engine heat and ignition timing. Mugen says stock S2000s dramatically retard ignition timing in response to elevated intake-air and coolant temps — a trait the above combination of parts removes.
So equipped, the Mugen S2000 scooted to 60 mph in only 5.4 seconds, 0.4 second quicker than the stock sports car. The Mugen car outdid the stocker in nearly every acceleration parameter, including 5-to-60 mph (6.2 seconds versus 6.8), quarter-mile (14.1 seconds at 100 mph versus 14.4 at 98 mph), and top-gear acceleration from 30 to 50 mph (9.3 seconds versus 9.8). Only top-gear runs from 50 to 70 mph yielded no improvement. Who could have guessed 15 more horses could do so much?
You buy the go-fast goodies through Mugen's North American distributor, King Motorsports Unlimited, based in Sullivan, Wisconsin. This race and tuning shop has been an uncommonly good 15-year partner to Japanese-based Mugen by not only selling Mugen parts but also developing its own.
Take the $500 King-developed bump-steer kit, for example. We knew nothing of any steering modifications and tested the car without a company representative present. Yet after testing, we were so impressed with the accurate and precise steering that we asked about it. Only then did we learn that by lowering the steering rack and raising the outer ball joints the King-designed bump-steer kit reduced the S2000's tendency to toe-out the front wheels when they rise over bumps.
In addition to the steering kit and engine mods, our test car was a rolling catalog of nearly every S2000 part available from Mugen and King. The suspension had new $3300 Mugen springs and shocks, a bigger $380 front anti-roll bar, $2640 Mugen wheels, and the latest high-performance Bridgestones, Potenza S-03s ($946 for four of them from the Tire Rack).
