I think something that was missed in this review was the price difference between the two cars. In 2009, a base s2000 would cost you $35,000. Fast forward 4 years later and you could buy a FRS/BRZ for $10k less.

Toyota and Subaru have made one of the most accessible sports cars of this generation.

3 years, Toyobaru was on sale early summer 2012 and Honda dealers still had inventory all the way up to 2011. You could theoretically have bought a brand new S2000 and traded it for a brand new FR-S within a year.

Worth noting Honda dealers struggled to sell S2000's and the numbers declined sharply, I wouldn't be surprised if you could drive off the lot in an S2000 in 2009 for less than the average FRS in it's first year of sales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_S...and_production

I still haven't quite digested that there have been more Toyobaru's sold worldwide than S2000's...

Not to mention it only took 3 years to get to that number. I can only imagine the improvements that can be made to the ft86 if it stays in production for another 7 years.

I remember reading that based on Hondas r and d , the s2000 was a 50 k car based on the first few years sales numbers

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Very true. I had purchased an Acura CL in August of 2008, and after hearing rumors that the S2k was reaching the end of the line, I went into a Honda dealer to check one out (around Thanksgiving). I absolutely fell in love with the car during the test drive, and they were willing to let a brand new, silver '08 go for $26k. I wanted a white one with red leather though, and they found me an '09 that would've been $32k OTD. The problem was that the loan on the Acura was prohibiting me from trading (I bought the CL at 58k miles, and in three months nearly doubled it, sinking the resale).

To this day, I wish I hung on to my Prelude and picked up the S2k as a weekend car instead of getting the CL.

I'm not surprised. The S2K was a pricey 2 seater convertible, and there was a cheaper convertible alternative (mx-5). Also the recession probably really hurt S2k sales starting around 2006.

The S2000 sold 110,000 copies in 10 yrs? Man the BRZ is hitting that now after just 2.5!

Honda did that with the NSX and S2000 stretched the life cycle out well past its usable life without updating the cars and after 9 years the market dried up.

The only benefit of that however while they were one and done models the extended life cycle helps owners of older cars with still being able to get factory parts without them being rare.

The FRS and BRZ sales will tank by year 4 and 5 if they are not improved upon or a higher trim level is not made availablee

Yeah while it hurts resale its made the aftermarket boom. Warranty parts are now easily accessible too which is nice. This will be one of the best cheapest used cars in a few more years.

Before I did these videos i was doing pricing research and you cant get a 2004+ s2000 with under 50k miles for under 17k. While you can get a 30k mile frs for around the same price.

As a used car at that price you can basically do forced induction, brakes and real suspension on one and spend about as much as buying a new one. Thats a huge plus for the 86 platform

Nice quality video, enjoyable to watch. But the clichés about “lack of power” and “if it only had power” are getting really old. In this respect, the video is a vanity project. These are talented video-ers, but for god sake make something new or move onto the next “hot” car.

You are right its a dead horse but going to try to deal with that in part 2.

You mean the 10 and the RS1.0 isn't enough to keep sales up?

(sarcasm)

This is my plan... pick up an FRS in a few years as a cheap daily driver, allowing me to do whatever I want with the S2K.

Unless the Nissan IDx gets a sleek new design and/or better designed suspension (double wishbones, if you did it for the Z and GTR, you can do it here, Nissan) and/or a factory turbo.... but even then, probably still the FRS due to the used FRS vs new Nissan cost difference.

I still lust for an FD RX7 too though...... haha

IIRC they only brought about 1500 per year into the US, it wasn't supposed to ever be a high volume car, it was a celebration of honda's racing heritage