To celebrate the retirement of a motoring legend — the Honda S2000 — we decided to let it do what it does best: stretch its legs on a stunning piece of road.
The Honda S2000 roadster and Bains Kloof Pass in the Western Cape share a kindred spirit — both were visionary projects made against all odds and utterly without compromise and that is a testament to how good they originally were and how they have stayed virtually unchanged to this present day.
The road
Bains Kloof Pass was opened by Andrew Geddes Bain in 1853 after four-and-a-half years of work, having elicited the labour of more than 1 000 slave convicts, at the unthinkable cost back then of £50 000. His pass through the Limietberge and Slanghoekberge, connecting Wellington to the interior, was one of many passes built in the Western Cape’s vast 19th-century road expansion programme. But it was such a towering achievement in civil engineering that the 30km pass has remained (aside from minor refinishing) untouched and was declared a national monument in 1980.
Bains described the terrain as: “(A) frightful terra incognita, repulsive and savagely grand. Vast piles of funeral-looking rocks everywhere disturbing progress, protruding their unearthly shapes to the precipitous banks of the foaming torrent of the Witte River… So gloomy was this place, there is a perfect absence of animal life …” The western side was easy, but the first 10km on the eastern side of the pass could be excavated only with gunpowder and the rest was exclusively drilled by hand.
The car
At the time of the S2000’s world launch more than 10 years ago, Honda’s first roadster in decades was a hugely advanced car. Honda boasted that its 177kW output from a normally aspirated 2.0-litre motor with variable valve lift technology (VTec) was the most powerful engine per litre in the world. It was a howling testament to Honda’s formative engineering glory in manufacturing high-revving motorcycle engines. Pre-empting all fuel and CO2 emissions concerns of the 21st century, it was also the cleanest and most economical engine, per kilowatt, in the world. It was also the first car with a sporty starter button, something all manufacturers can’t help but copy these days. And it was ultra light thanks to its rigid chassis and aluminium bonnet and boot lid. It weighed only 1Â 265kg.
Add rear-wheel drive, a mechanical, limited slip differential, perfect weight distribution and Honda armed the S2000 with every tool imaginable to provide unrelenting driving prowess. Of course, by modern standards the Honda S2000 is woefully underequipped: no sat nav, MP3/CD player, heated seats or reach adjustable steering. Honda’s unwillingness to sully the S2000 with such options over its product life no doubt annoyed many potential buyers. The cramped cabin must also have felt exceedingly small even a decade ago. So the S2000 has many flaws, but none was significant enough to detract from its successes.
The route
The ascent out of Wellington, on the western side of the mountain provides enough open road to let the S2000’s howl come to life; a roaring soundtrack bouncing off the slopes that feels like it’s tuned directly into your ears and eyes. Maximum torque kicks in at about 7Â 500rpm and that brings on a burst of exhaust noise and blistering acceleration.
On the tight, twisty, eastern side, however, it’s the Honda’s weapons-grade brakes and exquisitely focused gearbox that get a workout. Constant braking and constant shifting through the kloof is very hard work, with the always present threat of plunging off the precipitous cliffs or straying into the sheer rock face. Dozens of crosses line the road as timely reminders of this pass’s fearsome reputation for claiming lives. Despite this, stringing together its tight, precise twists at speed must be one of the most exhilarating driving experiences on Earth.
As the car cooled down having returned to the pass’s summit overlooking the Western Cape, knowing that its farewell thrash was at an end, it was difficult not to feel a sense of sadness over the obsolescence of this legendary car and road, both left in the wake of the inscrutable progress of modernity. In 1949 Du Toit’s Kloof Pass became the newer, preferred route connecting the Western Cape to the interior and in 1988 the Huguenot tunnel surpassed even that. In 2008, because of mounting financial and environmental concerns, Honda pulled the plug on performance cars such as the S2000 and replacement NSX supercar.
Bains Kloof Pass was regarded as Andrew Geddes Bains’s magnum opus, and so, too, should the S2000 roadster be Honda’s. May the pass and the car live on well into the future to thrill and invigorate the purist few.