Beautiful Honda S3000 Concept Sketch by Xanforce

Nice work.

Nice 2016 Honda S2000 Rendering by Martin Designs

I stumbled across this little beauty and thought I'd pass it along.  It's a nice rendering of what Martin thinks the direction of the replacement for the S2000 Roadster should be.  I got to say, I like it.  Feel free to check out this link and vote on his 'chop'.

http://www.autemo.com/profiles/?id=Martin

Honda designer talks about Next Sportscar

TOKYO -- Honda Motor Co., aiming to re-energize its performance cred, is studying a revival of an S2000-type sporty car.

The automaker's top exterior designer says he wants a midlevel sporty car added to the lineup between the two sports cars under development. A revived Acura NSX will debut atop the automaker's lineup in 2015. And at the bottom, Honda is targeting Japan with a sporty minicar inspired by the Small Sports EV Concept shown at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

"We are making the NSX and the small sporty minicar," Toshinobu Minami said in a recent interview at Honda's global design center. "Naturally, I personally want something in between."

Although his comments represented his own ambitions, such an entry was under study, he said. He declined to give details.

To properly nurture sports-car nameplates, a company must keep making them, Minami said, criticizing Honda's decision to drop sports cars when the global financial crisis hit.

"Don't quit," said Minami, who oversees global exterior design for the Acura and Honda brands. "Quitting the NSX and the S2000 is the thing I regret most."

Honda dropped the NSX in 2005 and scrubbed plans to revive it in 2008, as the foundering global economy undercut earnings. The company said at the time it needed more practical offerings. In January 2009, it said it was killing the S2000 roadster, a jaunty rear-wheel-drive, four-cylinder convertible, after a 10-year run.

Each car had a loyal following.

It is important to keep selling sporty cars "no matter what condition the company is in," Minami said. "It maintains that relationship with the customer."

He said the Honda brand's current sporty offering, the hybrid CR-Z compact hatchback, fills an important niche because of its electrified drivetrain. But the lineup also needs a more traditional driver's car, he said.

"I want to keep hybrid sports cars like the CR-Z," Minami said. "I also want to do something like the original S2000 we used to have. I want to do both."

Rediscovering Honda's roots is a top priority, he said.

"We have lost a bit of our sportiness while retaining good functionality," Minami said. "First, we want sportiness. The thing I want most is to recover our uniqueness."


Source;
http://www.autonews.com/article/20131007/OEM03/310079963/honda-designer-wants-sporty-car#axzz2h2kxNbFD

SCOOP: HONDA WORKING ON RWD COMPACT SPORTS CAR

With a long-standing tradition of building compact, open-top sports cars that started with the S600 and recently ended with the S2000, Honda seems intent to get back into the game. After seeing the success Toyota/Subaru has had with the 86 (Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ), Honda is primed to one-up its rivals.  According to a source within Honda, a new affordable sports car is being seriously considered, but don’t expect something as high-end as the S2000…think small, quick and light. Here’s what we learned:

Many Honda engineers and executives believe that they were beat to the punch when Toyota/Subaru introduced its affordable rear-drive sports offering. And now that they know the market is hungry again for exciting affordable sports cars, a new “S1500” is on the drawing board within the walls of the company’s Tokyo headquarters. The car would be small, probably even smaller than the Mazda MX-5, and come equipped with either a 1.3-liter or 1.5-liter inline-4 with i-VTEC. If the latter, it could well be the current engine under the Fit’s hood that can produce up to 132 hp. The car would be very light, about 900 kg or right at about 2000 lb., making it very quick and agile. It would of course be rear-drive, and come with a 5-speed manual gearbox. Our source says he would like to see the car priced around $20,000. There’s even talk that the “S1500” may come with a mid-engine layout, a la the Honda Beat.

As for the car’s design direction, we hear that Honda would either use the Japan-only N-ONE as the base (as pictured here) or make it look more like the current Civic. We like the N-ONE styling because it pays homage to the S600. Either way, look for Honda to come up with this answer to the Toyota 86 and the Mazda MX-5 in 2015 or 2016.

Source (via www.autoblog.com);
http://www.gtchannel.com/blog/scoop-honda-working-rwd-compact-sports-car