What's it like driving a serious sports car all day long, every day, for two weeks? I really liked it, but had had enough after two weeks. If there are any annoying characteristics in a car, you'll be fully aware of them after a few days. Other than the obviously small trunk, there are only two real complaints that I have with the car:
1. The seat does not provide enough back support, at least for someone over six feet tall, to be used all day every day in comfort. I ended up putting a towel in the small of my back much of the time to overcome this. I though that maybe it was just me, but after one day in the car, my wife had the same complaint.
2. Also, for tall people, the seatbelt can rub the left shoulder in a painful manner after a few days.
That is all I can find to complain about, though. It can be hard to see traffic signals if you're over six feet tall, like me, but I can live with that. I'm tall enough that the visors are completely useless for me, but I can live with that too.
The controls on the car are very quick and precise. Any small movement to the steering wheel results in an instant change in direction, but the car is still stable at high speeds, as long as you have both hands on the wheel. I would not recommend taking both hands off of the wheel and steering with your knees at high speeds, though. I did that once and made a slight correction, which was instantaneous, causing my legs to move, steering the car more in the same direction. This could lead to dangerous oscillations if not corrected in time. I quickly learned to limit the "knee steering" to very straight roads. Usually to squeeze out a bit of sun screen or something.
The shifter has a very short throw and is also very precise. This is great, as long as you either take your time, or provide a little more pressure than would be required for most other cars. A quick but weak shift can cause grinding of the gears if you're not careful. This is not usually a problem unless you're trying to drag race someone.
One of the best parts of the car, however, is the 2 liter VTEC engine. It has high compression pistons (11:1) and four valves per cylinder, which provides smooth and decent power up to about 6500 rpms, but at that point the camshaft switches to a different cam profile and a significant amount of additional power is suddenly available from there on up to the 9000 rpm redline. The 6-speed close-ratio transmission is designed to keep the engine in the power band, as long as you run it up to at least 8500 rpms before shifting.
The engine makes the biggest difference when passing on two-lane highways, which made up the fast majority of my trip. The typical sequence of events involved coming up on a car travelling at about 65 mph when I wanted to go 70 or 75. As soon as the road was clear ahead, I would shift to third gear, run it up to redline at about 85, then shift to 4th gear about the time I passed the front of the vehicle being passed, and continue accelerating a little bit until back in the lane again. It was hard to keep it under 100 mph doing it this way because the car is still accelerating so strongly at that speed.
It's even more fun to pass someone going about 50 mph, because then you shift to 2nd gear until 65 mph. The car has amazing acceleration from 50 to 100 mph. It's almost like a high performance motorcycle.
Top Down Motoring
One of my goals on the trip was to drive with the top down as much as possible. I didn't have to put it up at all on the first half of the trip, but once it started raining in Yellowstone, I had to put it up off and on for the rest of the trip whenever it rained very hard.
With light rain, the top can stay down as long as you keep moving. However, once it rains enough that the wipers move a bit of water to the side, the water moves along the side window, comes up over the top, and drips down on your left shoulder.
I decided to use the vinyl cover for the top to keep dust off of it, which was fine as long as there was no passenger. When I had to put the top up, I would just stash the cover in the passenger seat. That was another incentive to lower the top again as soon as the rain quit. However, on the last three days of the trip, I had my wife with me, and this was in Washington where it rains a lot. That required some careful arrangements in the trunk to get everything in, since the cover takes up quite a bit of room. We fit it in, but it was tricky.
The original car, as available in the year 2000, has a serious backdraft between the seats. The 2001 car comes standard with a small screen to reduce the wind. At the suggestion of other S2000 owners, I purchased a clear plexiglass Aeroscreen from Mingster that does a great job of blocking the backdraft. The cockpit was reasonably calm at all speeds with the top down. In fact, it was calm enough for the air conditioner to be effective in the 100+ degree desert heat.
I had been getting about 20 mpg with the car driving around the Bay Area. I was surprised that the trip average was 27.6 over the full distance. That's pretty good, although the gas costs more, since you're supposed to buy 92 octane to keep the high compression engine happy. The engine computer can deal with lower octane gas, though, which is a good thing, because the best I could get at Glacier National Park was 87 octane. The car's range is about 300 miles, although I went 352 on one tank.
The car's chassis and suspension deals very well with all types of roads, but the tires tend to wander on roads with "grooves" made by heavy trucks. When one side of the tire is half an inch or more higher than the other, the car wanders a bit. This is especially tricky when attempting to pass someone on such a road. Fortunately those type of roads are fairly rare, except in Montana and New Mexico.
Although the car is capable of going very quickly on twisty roads, it's also fun to drive at a slower pace as well, as long as it's not behind another car forcing me to go slower than I want.
I only had to do heavy braking once, on a road in Arizona with no solid lines in either direction. I went to pass a car and suddenly saw an oncoming car come up out of a dip in the road, too close to complete the pass safely, even in a quick car like the S2000. The car instantly scrubbed off 20 mph of speed so that I could safely get back behind the car I wanted to pass. I appreciate brakes that slow you down right now. I no longer trust passing lane markings completely.
As with most cars, power is significantly reduced at high altitudes. It's okay up to about 7000 or 8000 feet, but at 10,000 feet it's hard to get started and the engine just feels week. If I lived way up in the mountains I would have to get a supercharger or turbo. Somewhere in British Columbia I finally noticed that I had descended to a decent altitude when full power was once again available in the lower rpm range.
Clothing and Sunscreen
One of the issues with driving all day long in a convertible is maintaining proper body temperature and keeping from getting a bad sunburn. Since I tan reasonably well, I prefer to use Coppertone Sport #8 as a sunscreen. I like it because you don't feel like you're covered in oil when you first put it on and it doesn't wash off due to perspiration or of you go swimming. I also learned that it doesn't seem to harm leather, since I managed to spill it on my leather seats a couple of times while attempting to apply it while driving.I always made sure that I applied sunscreen either before starting out for the day, or as soon as the sun was up far enough to have any effect. I went through two weeks with no sunburn, but a nice tan, with the exception of where I part my hair. I didn't think of putting on sunscreen where I have hair, but didn't consider that the sun would get through where I part it. It wasn't enough of a sunburn to be painful, just enough that the skin peeled during the second week, which was a little bit annoying.
You can always wear a hat to save your head, but I hate to wear hats. I've never found a hat that feels good, but I make do with a red hat I picked up from the Honda dealer with a Honda emblem on the front. I wear the hat when the sun is low enough on the horizon to be in my eyes, but not low enough that the windshield pillar blocks it. I also wear a hat in the afternoon between about 2:00 and 5:00 when I feel like I've already had enough sun. I attached a string to the back of the had and looped it over a button on my shirt so it wouldn't blow off when passing big trucks. I only almost lost it once and that was when I had decided I didn't really need to attach the string.
When I was out in the California desert and the temperature was in the 100's, I was concerned enough about the back of my neck that I stuck a handkerchief on the back of my head and held it on with the hat to protect my neck. I didn't get sunburned, but it felt like it was getting burned. I also resorted to a loose long sleeve shirt to protect my arms during the hottest part of the day. In the late afternoon in the California desert, I even turned the hat sideways to protect the side of my face that the sun was on. It was hot enough that I didn't care if I looked like a total dork. I supposed I could have just put the top up, but I wasn't that desperate.
So, during the hottest part of the day I went with a hat, a loose long sleeve shirt with the collar turned up for extra neck protection, and plenty of sunscreen. The one really hot day in the desert had me thinking of Lawrence of Arabia and trying to find more protection for my neck by using a handkerchief. I also used the air conditioner above about 95 degrees, which worked surprisingly well with the top down.
What about the cold? It was cold enough in Glacier National Park and parts of British Columbia that there was fresh snow in the upper mountains. When it's real cold, I wear a leather jacket (fashion leather, not something appropriate for a motorcycle) and keep the heater on. When it's only "cool", I make do with the same loose long sleeve shirt I wear over my short sleeve shirt to protect me from the sun in the heat and don't bother with the heater. Generally, the only part exposed to the cold is my neck. I've found that turning up my collar is enough to keep my neck warm.
Keeping It Clean
I tried real hard to keep the car clean along the way. I used towels to protect the plastic rear window from scratches and put a car cover on when I could. There wasn't much I could do to keep from squishing bugs on it. The car stayed pretty nice until I hit the first rain in Yellowstone National Park, then there were many different things that helped get it really dirty. There were detours, dirt roads, lots of rain off and on, and of course, lots of bugs. By the time I got to Vancouver, it didn't even have the shiny red appearance anymore, it was now a dull red. In fact, things got so bad that I stopped at a high school fundraiser car wash in Eureka to get it cleaned up a little bit. Any S2000 owner would consider that to be desperate measures.
Fortunately, it cleaned up nicely and there appears to be no long-term damage from the trip.
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Copyright (c), 2001 by Scott R. Nelson
Page last updated July 16, 2001
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