The Slow Death of an Icon

It's hard to believe, but a shadow is coming over the sports-car world, the light of an icon in the world of true sports cars is about to be snuffed out; Honda is about to put the S2000 to rest. Let's take a moment to remember this great.
When this little beauty first debuted it was reputed to be better then the Porsche Boxster and BMW Z3/4, and the kicker was it was 15-20grand less then either. However time wore on the Boxster and the Bimmer became more powerful and left the little S2000 behind. The Honda stayed true to it's roots however and did what it did best, provide ultimate enjoyment for the driver. The S2000 was light, moderately powerful, handled like a true sports car with no traction control or stability management (at least until later), Car and Driver still argues it has the world's best manual transmission, saying once you hit the throttle you were Michael Schumacher blasting down the tunnel in Monte Carlo . However slowly the lesser sports cars have caught up to the great, the Miata MX-5 is threatening this inexpensive sports car's reign. The S2000 can no longer compete with the now much more powerful German cars that it defeated before. In order to buy the car another year or two, Honda released the S2000-CR (or Club Racer), it has a stiffer suspension, new aerodynamics, weight reduction, and is more racy in general, it's the blue one with the big spoiler in the picture above. The nails in the coffin are going in as Honda's been asking college students for new designs on the model, none of which are particularly appealing. With the death of the revered Honda/Acura NSX came mourning but its coming replacement is said to have a freakin V10, if Honda can get 240HP out of a four-cylinder, imagine what they'll do with 6 more pistons. Only time will tell the future this masterpiece of engineering. If you can get your hands on one, do it, because this is bound to become collectible with each one assembled by hand in Japan; in 50 years you could be sitting on a mint.