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The S2000's long-rumored successor is nowhere to be found. Instead, Honda is helping owners keep their aging drop-tops on the road by relaunching production of hard-to-find parts. And it's inviting enthusiasts to chime in.

Manufactured from 1999 to 2009, the S2000 became an instant classic that remains highly sought-after even a decade after it retired. The earliest examples are old enough to drink, and finding parts is becoming increasingly difficult because they don't regularly appear in junkyards, so Honda hopes to make maintaining — and, soon enough, restoring — an S2000 a breeze by offering a selection of factory-built parts through its dealer network.

It announced the program on its Japanese website, but it didn't mention which components it will make available. That's because it hasn't decided yet; it's asking enthusiasts to help it put together its parts catalog. It wants S2000 owners to reach out on various social media platforms with a list of the parts they want to see reproduced, the ones that need to remain in production in the foreseeable future, and the ones that have no aftermarket support.

Honda will take submissions until April 30, according to Motor Trend, and it will publish its S2000 parts catalog the following month. Sales in Japan will begin in June 2020. Autoblog asked if American enthusiasts will be able to order parts, too, or if they should fill their yard with a herd of parts cars, and we'll update this story if we learn more.

It's taken decades, but cars from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s are finally reappearing on the radar of the companies that made them. Toyota recently announced it will manufacture a small selection of parts for the third- and fourth-generation variants of the Supra, while Mopar sells heritage parts for the Lancia Delta Integrale. Mazda launched a restoration service for the first-generation Miata in 2017, and it delivered the first finished car the following year.

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Every great Japanese sportscar carries a legacy. The Toyota 2000GT proved that an emerging automaking nation could take on the world. The Datsun 240Z brought performance to the everyman. The original Miata resurrected the lost joy of lightweight, open-topped motoring. As it turns 20 this year, what lessons does the Honda S2000 leave behind?

This particular example is a 2008 CR model belonging to Alex Soo of Vancouver, who also has a standard S2000 he purchased more than a decade ago. The CR designation stands for Club Racer, and this is the most hardcore variant of the S2000 sold in the US. However, though it wears numbers on the upper left of its windshield, fresh from a session at the Ridge, this car is not purely a track rat.

Nor is it a garage queen. Soo regularly participates in local club events, including an annual drive to Mount Baker, and runs up through the tunnels of the Fraser Canyon in BC. Gaze closely at the paintwork on the nose of this dagger-like little roadster, and you'll find the tell-tale pitting of a car that is loved, but also used.

This January, at the Tokyo Auto Salon, Honda paid tribute to both the S2000 and owners like Soo with an updated early car it dubbed the 20th Anniversary S2000 prototype. Prepared by Honda Access, the company's parts and accessories division, this S2000 benefited from new bodywork with claimed genuine aerodynamic benefits, a retuned suspension, 17 inch staggered fitment wheels, and an upgraded audio system.

All these parts will be available to S2000 owners looking to refresh their car for years to come. As with Mazda and their MX-5 restoration catalogue, and Nissan and their Skyline heritage parts, Honda is honouring a hero from its past.

The sad part about this tribute is, unfortunately, that it's probably an admission that Honda will never build something like the S2000 again. This car may be labelled a prototype, but there's nothing to suggest that anything new is in the pipeline. In fact, if you look at Honda's current lineup, largely reliant on turbocharging and shared platform manufacturing, the company's products seem to be moving further away from the high-revving heritage that inspired the S2000 in the first place.

Last year, I was lucky enough to sample some of that original screaming intensity by way of a very rare Canadian-market 1966 Honda S600. The company's anniversary in the US began in 1969 with the proto-Civic Honda N600, but a few S600s made their way to Canada first via a handful of motorcycle dealerships.

The S600 is a tiny car crammed with every idea Soichiro Honda could dream up. It has a quad-carbureted, 606cc engine that features double overhead cams, makes 57hp at 8500 rpm, and redlines at over 10,000 rpm. Keeping the thing tuned properly is ordinarily a nightmare, but owner Mike Gane is a retired electrical engineer with the kind of mind that welcomes mechanical challenges. Naturally, he also owns an S2000.

The frenetic little S600 is something of a cross between a hummingbird and a rollerskate. It flits across the landscape in a fury of engine revolutions, not exactly speedy, but poised on its fully independent suspension, and pivoting on its skinny tires.

This effervescence was the spirit Honda's engineers wanted to recapture for the company's 50th anniversary. A concept from 1995 already existed, the Sport Study Concept (SSM), designed in partnership with Pininfarina. The concept took the conventional front-engined, rear-wheel-drive layout of Honda's ancestral S-cars, and mixed in a five-speed automatic gearbox taken from the NSX, and a five-cylinder, 20-valve engine that spun to a projected 8000 rpm.

The production S2000 that launched four years later made the SSM look unambitious. The styling had been refined by Honda designer Daisuke Sawai into a classic and angular shape that continues to age gracefully. The headlines, however, were all about that powertrain.

The first generation of S2000, called the AP1 internally and by Honda fans, received a 2.0L four-cylinder engine that was tucked entirely behind the front axle. It produced a peak of 240 hp at 8300 rpm, with the redline set at 9000 rpm. At the time, and to this day, the S2000 could boast the highest naturally aspirated power output per displacement of any production car.

The all-aluminum block was sleeved with fibre-reinforced metal, and the piston skirts were molybdenum-coated for friction reduction. At full scream, those forged-aluminum pistons are moving through their 84mm stroke at 25m/s, speeds that approach the internals of a Formula One car.

Honda's bulletproof VTEC dual-camshaft profile system worked on both the exhaust and intake to allow for exceptional breathing at higher rpms. The car is tractable but not particularly special below 5000 rpm, but changes completely as the revs climb.

Paired with this jewel of a four-cylinder was probably the finest manual transmission built by Honda, and thus one of the best gearboxes ever. The cliche is to praise the S2000's rifle-bolt shifter precision, but in actuality it's both more surgical and more satisfying.

That's handy, because with just 153 lb-ft of torque on offer, the S2000 demands to be thrashed into the stratosphere just to feel special. Which it loves. The engine and gearbox are Honda at its best, proper race-derived engineering in a road car. Even Fernando Alonso would have to grin at the sound as the S2000's digital tach spikes red.

As for the S2000's chassis, there were a few teething issues. Some owners complained of twitchy handling, particularly a sensitivity to mid-corner bumps. Setting an early S2000's alignment to European specifications is also supposed to tame the handling somewhat.

Further, the lack of torque required a frenzied driving style that wasn't suited to a casual Honda fan. The later model, the AP2, received a four-cylinder with increased displacement to 2.2L for 9 lb-ft more torque, with the same horsepower peak now at 7800 rpm. The suspension was also retuned for more compliance.

But overall, it wasn't that the S2000 was flawed as much as it was highly sensitive to inputs and a bit demanding. The early cars especially didn't flatter novice drivers. The later ones have a more approachable limit, but still require skilled hands to get the most out of them.

Contrast this high-revving scalpel with Honda's current performance banner carrier, the Civic Type R. The S2000 is classically styled, demands a bit of respect, and exists to shred air molecules with Swiss watch precision. The Type R huffs boost and is cheat-code fast in almost anyone's hands. Also, while I like the R, it does look like it should come with a Brian Earl Spilner commemorative vape pen.

Over the decade that it was built, some 66,547 S2000s found homes in the US. It was roundly outsold by competitors like the Porsche Boxster, although these days the S2000 has the last laugh by having the better resale. After all, who wouldn't rather maintain an old Honda instead of an old water-cooled Porsche?

The S2000 wasn't for everybody. It's still not for everybody. You have to be something of a dyed-in-the-wool Honda enthusiast like Soo and his fellow club members. Or at least you have to be able to appreciate what a special machine the S2000 was, arriving when it did.

Consider that, in 1999, nearly all the giants of Japan were dead. The Toyota Supra, the Mazda RX-7, and the 3000GT had all exited the market, and the NSX was hardly as exciting as it had been a decade earlier. But here was Honda, flying in the face of reason with a car that boasted insane rev limits and a naturally-aspirated outputs that perhaps only Ferrari could match. The S2000 picked up the torch dropped by the titans of the bubble economy, and carried it forward.

A car like the S2000 isn't likely to happen again. But rejoice that it did, and that it can still take its place proudly alongside some of the most rewarding sports cars produced by Japan. Owners understand this. Judging from their new accessories catalogue, so does Honda. Did you really think it was time to write the S2000 off as merely a historical footnote?

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