Honda S2000 'R'- AP2 Build With FK8 K20C1 Type R Power | American Tuned ft. Rob Dahm

When you start hyper-modifying cars, you get excited, right? But then you overdo it, the enjoyment actually becomes less. So we're trying to find that sweet spot, it's like. Yeah, I think you found that happy medium. There are a lot of reasons to tune or modify a car. Sometimes it's about finding the extreme, but sometimes it's about finding the perfect balance. That's why we're at Evasive Motorsports to see how they bring the ethos of perfect balance to both the track and the street. This is the S2000R, Evasive Motorsports' vision of a car that Honda never built. They took the much-loved Honda S2000 and updated it with modern touches, including the FK8 two-liter turbocharged engine out of a modern Civic Type R, a move some Honda fans might find a bit controversial. But before we check out the S2000R, of course I wanted to check out the shop where the vision and the hard work came together. If you're a person who loves working on your own car, you always wish for more space, right? This is the dream amount of space. You have a dyno, a CNC machine, welding machines, even a manual bridgeport mill, ability to mount tires, align it. This is like the dream for any builder. It's neat to prototype parts, especially at a place like this, where you take a chunk of metal and turn this into a bracket or a fuel pump hanger or whatever it might be. These sort of things you see more frequently in shops, partially because, okay, supply chain issues or the part just doesn't exist. On first glance, this is a tastefully modified car, but I'm sure that not everything that meets the eye is what you've done to it. Can you run me through what is this car? We call it the S2000R. Any Honda guy would tell you a Type R is like the epitome of Honda sports cars. They never made one for the S2000. So we try to create it ourselves with some of the modern technologies and performance upgrades, but we still want to keep it overall very simple and OEM-ish looking. We're modernizing the car, right? So this is what modern cars are. There's all displays like this. It's a 50-50 weight distribution from the factory. We like the fact that we could kind of keep that weight distribution, even with all we've done. So what all is done to it? I guess we could start from under the hood. So the factory S2 revved to 9,000. There was horsepower, but no torque. This engine came out of a new Civic Type R. So it's a factory turbocharged 2.0 liter direct injection. It's a game changer, the way it drives, yeah. We kept all the street comfort stuff in here, like the air conditioning still works. I drove a S2000 years ago, and I think what this feels like to me is what I dreamed the S2000 to feel like, and I guess that was your goal, right? We had this idea that if Honda was to make an S2000, they would probably use this engine. It is their latest technology, and it's a Type R-style engine. It's built differently than other engines. It's got power steering, ABS, all of my switches all work. All the creature comfort. Yeah, and the suspension's not jarring. Like, we've got these little bumps in the road. So we spec'd out the suspension to be firm, but also compliant. I think this car is really made for, like, canyon roads like this. Do you feel that people might get mad at you for doing the Type R? For people who like the 9,000 RPM, saying that's the best engine ever, they're always gonna say, why did you do that? You ruined it. But I think for the majority of the time, people really appreciate what we're doing with this. What's your favorite thing about this car? It's a true driver's car. I really like that about this car. It's a true roadster. What was the biggest challenge in making this car come to life? I think the biggest challenge is creating the entire car versus looking at just one thing. I really don't want this car to give a vibe of, like, we just threw an engine in here, painted it a different color, and that's it. But we want people to notice the little details that we did. We've built so many race cars with track-oriented S2000s that we wanna be somewhere right in between a stock car and a track car, where you have all the creature comforts, yet it has the performance of a track car when you do wanna open it up and drive it hard, yeah. When it comes to crazy cars on YouTube, you think of, like, off-road fire trucks or burnouts. I would argue that this is one of the craziest cars because it lives up to exactly what they said it would be, the S2000R. We're gonna talk to Calvin, who's one of the engineers that did a lot of the work on the car. One of the things I always wished for was, as any Honda owner, is a Type R version of their own car, right? And then as our company progressed, we gained, like, the skill set and the ability to build our own. So this is kind of the result of that. This was the engine that you planned on using from the beginning of the idea? Engine swaps are a big part of, like, Honda community, right? And so what better engine to put in a S2000 than the newest Type R engine? Was it hard to choose where to stop with this, or did you have a pretty good idea of, like, okay, we're gonna do this, but not that? We're tuners. Our primary market is making cars wild and fast on the racetrack. But for this car, we had to really dial a lot of things back. We usually want, like, a loud exhaust, have the car really low. But for the Type R, it's always been a really reserved look. We really wanted to embody what, like, Type R meant. Could you help give me a little shortcut and tell me a little bit about all the different small things that you've changed to the looks of the car? We'll start at the front. It's a 20th anniversary bumper, so it's actually an OEM Honda bumper. But the shape of the bumper is a little bit, it kind of flares out. And we wanted a really squared, aggressive-looking front, so we made a small carbon lip. It actually brings the bottom of the bumper back together, so it narrows the shape a little bit. And the flow continues to the fenders, which are about 25 millimeter wider for wider tires. And even that is kind of blended into the bumper. The hood has a subtle bump for air intake that we have inside. We had a little bit more sleek, modern-looking mirror. And then all the way back to the rear wing, which every Type R you've seen has some sort of, like, little rear wing spoiler on it. Rather than just slap on a wing, we shrouded the brackets with a cover, so it looks like a completely OEM wing. We have the whole dash and the side sill reupholstered in suede. We ran a, like, Porsche RS-style door card. It's all carbon on the door with a red door strap, a lot of red accents. And Recaro came out with this beautiful carbon mixed with suede seat. And so that's what we ran with. We want to offer this as a complete car to our customers. We're getting really close to it. This is our, obviously, car number one. And I think with some little more refinement development, we'll be at a point where we'll be comfortable offering to the public. We want people to experience this car firsthand. You know, I think once you drive it, you'll have a clear understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. I get it. I definitely, I'm driving it. I definitely want one. This is Evasiv's EV car that went up Pike's Peak. It was actually the fastest EV car there. It's a Model 3 Performance. Had to make it lightweight. So with the weight reduction, with the carbon panels, lots of downforce and suspension. We did modify the cooling system. So is there a certain temperature where the batteries are like, nope, we're going to start degrading performance? There is a number where once it crosses that threshold, everything kind of goes into limp mode. And we don't want that, yeah. Gotcha. This is awesome. And we could make a whole episode out of this, but you guys have a lot more things going on and a lot of them start with S and end with 2000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of our specialty here. We were all owners of S2000 at one point. So it's like a passion car for us. We all love it. This is the S2000 RS. And this is going to be our Pike's Peak Challenger for this year. This car started off as like a shop demo car. It's a time attack car. We just, over the years, continue to evolve the car, to upgrade it, fully built engine, turbocharged, dry sumped, and it makes about 650 to the wheels. I even see, is that what, a laser height sensor? Yes, it is. Okay. Yeah, you noticed that, yeah. So we have shock sensors and height sensors. Both? Exactly, yeah. So what we learned with this car is like, the data helps tremendously. When you get to a car to this level, like analyzing the data helps us refine and tune the car so much faster and more precise. What got us into Pike's Peak is that, you know, we're always into time attack. You want to prove yourself, you bring your car to the track instead of lap time. And I think Pike's Peak is the epitome of that idea. Pike's Peak, I would say, is probably one of the most difficult race ever. On race day, everything has to be 100%. And you get one shot per year. I'm assuming that, I mean, with having a driver like Dai, that's one thing, but for a person like myself or any other team that's fresh, they're on the simulator a lot. Yeah, and the simulator, I mean, that's like the closest you can get to experiencing that. Yeah, for sure. You're at an 8% incline most of the way, but you don't see that in videos or even on board camera because they don't show that. You're actually racing literally up a mountain. Yeah. But that changes how you handle those turns. That blew my mind. Exactly. You could simulate all day, but it's not the same. Like when you're actually at the mountain, you kind of get respect for how crazy this actually is. Easy. Oh yeah, I'm dead. Okay, we're good, we're good. I think I hurt the car. You see it wobbling? I got work to do. It's amazing how a single unique car model can capture the imagination of a community of enthusiasts, how it can inspire new threads of engineering and design, and how, even decades after it was new, it can find a whole new life as a car its manufacturer never intended to exist.