The beginnings of the 21st century were a wonderful time if tuning was your thing. The “Full Throttle” movies marked a turning point, launching car tuning into the center of popular culture. In the United States tuning never ceased to exist, while in Spain it languished as soon as the ITV became serious with the approvals. Be that as it may, today’s protagonist belongs to another era. He is a one-off based on the Honda S2000 and produced by Mugen, under the suggestive name of SS2200. This was the only single-seater Honda S2000.
Mugen is a specialist tuner for Honda, and for years, has practically official status – Honda even honors the official warranty after installing Mugen components. At the beginning of the century, it experienced a tremendous economic boom thanks to the popularization of large-scale tuning, and it was even allowed to carry out projects like the one we present to you in this article. The Mugen SS2200 was a single-seater with a retro-futuristic designwhich anticipated a car that was never manufactured.
It was never mass produced, but many replicas were created by amateurs.
Basically, I doubt that it was much more than a design exercise, whose objective was to attract the attention of the public and the specialized press. this one off It was presented at the Tokyo Auto Salon in 2000., a whopping 21 years ago. That show specialized in prepared vehicles, and the Mugen star was one of the high points of the year. The most striking thing about the car was the fairing of its passenger compartment and the installation of a red roll-over archprotecting only the driver, sole occupant of the car.
The steering wheel was new, as well as the instrumentation, which became analog and was similar to that of a motorcycle. The driver’s seat was replaced by a large lateral support bucket. The rest of the car was packed with Mugen parts that could be fitted to road cars, including a bonnet studded with air inlets, a massive fixed rear spoiler, and a newly minted rear bumper. Many parts could be found soon after on the Mugen “SS style” Honda S2000s.
Its maximum power was reached at 8,300 rpm despite the increase in displacement.
Personally, I prefer his 18-inch MD-F wheels. Retro-futuristic style wheels that were once sold publicly and that you either hate or love. The headlights were partially occluded, as were the taillights, making the car look like something out of a future racing manga. Mugen put the S2000 on a strict slimming diet, which brought his weight to only 953 kilos. In addition, he boosted his F20C engine to the 258 hpan increase of 11 CV with respect to the 247 CV of the Japanese S2000.
To do so, they raised their displacement to 2.2 liters, installed lightweight forged pistons, and retouched the engine’s electronics. The result was that the 0 to 100 km/h it went from the 6.2 seconds of the production car to only 5.0 seconds, gaining in response and power delivery. Mugen never mass-produced it, but Mugen even revisited the idea of it in 2007, when it introduced the Mugen S2000 Open-Top Pure Sports—bodied as a two-seater, rather than a single-seater. Have we told you how much we miss the Honda S2000?
Its carbon fiber intake stood out in a special way when you opened the hood.