Honda S2000 - Drag to Drift

Remember when Honda S2000s were cheap? Aunt Jemima remembers. And I damn sure remember too! Because I’m the dummy who didn’t buy one! Literally, that car was made for a dude like me! I have dreads & dreads love verts. And I love Hondas AND Jeeps. An S2000 is just a fast street Jeep with VTEC that easier to work on than a Boxster S lol. Shoot the sunroof got deleted from my CRX & thrown in the trash 10 years ago. I ripped the carpet out & drilled holes in the floorboard for drainage purposes. And you don’t even wanna know what I did to the seats. The point is: I don’t mind getting rained on now & then. It’s frickin’ therapeutic actually! I wear boardshorts every damn day just hoping it’ll happen.

Why… the hell… did I not buy an S2000 when they were free?

It seems like S2000s are even freer for yankees up there where it’s cold.

My dontchaknow buddy, Chris Sullivan (out of Chicago) got his S2k for 2,500 bucks! What the eff dude!

And Justin Medina here… also got his for dirt cheap because it was yellow. Now… I personally love yellow. Hell I’d pay extra for yellow on just about any car other than a 350Z. But we’re NOT talkin’ about a pristine coat of yellow when Justin bought it. This S2000 was a yellow car… that had been wrapped in yellow. *Red Flags* You know there was gonna be some big-time BS going on under that wrap, and there was. But the price was just too right at 7k. And Justin didn’t like the yellow anyway… so paint was in the plans all along.

The fact is: 7 years ago…

The Honda S2000 was Justin’s barely attainable dream car! And he was smart to buy at the bottom of the depreciation curve, like I wasn’t. Basically, Justin scrounged up enough cash to basically buy the worst example with the lowest price tag he could find, and bought the yellow 2005 S2000 of his nightmares lol. He drove the yellow bastard, up there in Detroit through rain, sleet, & snow… all four seasons. It was a lifestyle. And he did that everyday, right up until the motor blew. That’s when things went haywire. See by that point… Justin had a better, more steady career-path going. Which meant more expendable income.

And Justin’s vice at the time was drag racing…

Drag racing will burn up any extra cash you don’t need. So Justin Medina built himself a big turbo motor with a turbo 400 transmission, and ran high 8s in this very car! Then he lost interest.

Justin always thought drifting was neat…

He’d just never jumped into it. But hell, why not? So Justin did what everybody does nowadays, and bought himself an old BMW to learn on. He seemed to pick up drifting pretty naturally… probably because of all that experience driving an S2000 in the frozen-ass Michigan during winters lol.

But then one day he was like, “Ohhhh riiiiight I have that fast ugly yellow S2000!”

Justin wanted to bring his Honda roots over to drifting. And since everybody says S2000s are not good drift cars, it just made sense!

So Justin ripped everything out of the S2000 that made it fast in a straight line…

And started adding things to make it fast sideways. One of which was a BMW ZF5 transmission mated to the Honda engine (see modlist). During the swap-over process, Justin finally got rid of the yellow for his favorite golden-era Honda color – Midori green. He figured… if he was gonna build a drift car, it needed to have a little flash to it! Justin painted the car himself during the winter in a 1-bay garage. The expectations were low. But Justin took his time in the prep, and what was honestly intended to be a 20-foot paint job… ended up being more like a 4-foot paint job!

Justin’s only in his 2nd-year drifting.

And this is still his first year drifting the S2000. But so far he’s had a lot of success… both in reliability AND in skill refinement. As mentioned, Justin just kind of picked it up pretty naturally, and has already found himself in a ‘well I’ll be damned’ type of 3rd place podium situation. This winter, the S2000 will get a roll cage, so that the competition can potentially go to the next level if that’s where it decides to go. Here is Justin’s YouTube channel if you want to follow along.