The Honda S2000 is many things—a modern classic, an all-time great shifter, an all-time great Honda—but it isn’t that great off-road. Unless, of course, you take matters into your own hands as Adri MP (@adrimp36 on Instagram) has done.
His happens to be a UK-spec 2009, which means it had the styling of the AP2 but retained the smaller, 8,800-rpm F20C motor that we only got pre-2004 here in North America. In other words, it’s the one you want. Adri has 911 Dakar-ized it with chunky Yokohama Geolandar all-terrain tires on Braid wheels, and replaced the bumpers with tubes and skidplates using custom-fabricated parts.
The wildest part, however, is that he’s currently about a month into driving it from Barcelona to Tokyo, a near-10,000-mile journey.
Credit: Adri MP
“I plan to transform it into a track car for Japan,” he told me via DM. “That was the main dream.”
A self-proclaimed Honda obsessive, Adri has always been into cars and says he picked the S2000 for this mission simply because “it’s my favorite car.” He’s apparently had seven of them.
“The greatest part is to see something crazy grow in your mind, and now you are the main character of that ‘movie.’ Every day something interesting happens…”
Adri recounts particularly difficult bump- and pothole-ridden roads in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, as well as one instance when the turbodiesel E34 BMW support wagon started “drinking a lot of oil.”
Credit: Adri MP
“We thought it was the turbo, so after an entire day converting the car to N/A to see if this was the problem, we went to the hotel, and some random guys were standing next to the BMW. We explained what happened to the car, and they said, ‘Oh, we are E34 specialists, and we have a turbo from that exact engine [in the building next to the hotel].’”
“Everywhere we go, people want to take photos. Of the car but also with us. And to live the desert experience in Kazakhstan was something really special—we were literally alone.”
Adri is documenting his trip on Instagram with some professional-looking videography, and plans on releasing a whole feature on YouTube on the endeavor called “Road to Race.”
When I asked Adri if his off-road S2000 had a name, he said it didn’t, but suggested something to do with speedboats since it kind of looks like one. S2000 Sterrato would be a funny thing to call it, but an even better one might be the Honda Safari2000.
