Honda/LK1st/mark2nd

By DANIEL TAUB

Staff Reporter

Is there a room on the streets for yet another sexy roadster?

Honda Motor Co. Ltd. apparently thinks so. Last week, it introduced its four-cylinder, 240-horsepower S2000 roadster at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, touting it not only as a return to Honda’s sports-car roots, but also as ideal for baby boomers wanting to trade in their minivans once their kids are grown.

“This is very much in the vein of ‘fun to drive’ the enthusiast’s car,” said Art Garner, public relations manager for American Honda Motor Co. Inc., the Torrance-based American subsidiary of the Japanese auto maker.

Honda will introduce the S2000 in Japan in April and in the United States this fall. Garner said Honda expects to sell 15,000 of the cars worldwide during its first full year. About 5,000 of those are expected to be sold in the U.S. market, he said.

That’s a fraction of what Honda’s other models sell. In the 1998 model year, for example, American Honda sold 413,628 Accords, making it the best-selling car in the country. The company sold 328,748 Civics and 91,700 CR-Vs, Honda’s small sports utility vehicle.

But company officials say the S2000 is a different animal. Rather than going after hordes of buyers attracted to the utilitarian Accords, Civics and CR-Vs, Honda is hoping the S2000 will appeal to sports car enthusiasts the same people who might have bought Honda’s first automobile, the S500 roadster, back in 1963.

With a planned $30,000 price tag, a lack of back seats and a trunk too small to hold anything but a few grocery bags, the S2000 is not exactly practical. With its six-speed manual transmission, roll bars, electrically powered ragtop and racecar-style “start” button, “this is a true driving enthusiast’s car,” Garner said.

But the number of such enthusiasts is relatively small, particularly among baby boomers, one of the car’s principle targets, said George Peterson, president of automobile consulting firm AutoPacific Inc. in Santa Ana.

“One thing a maturing baby boomer doesn’t want is to bend down to get into a car,” Peterson said. “One of the inherent characteristics of a sports car is, you have to bend down to get into it. You have all these aging bones out there, and these people don’t want to sacrifice ease of use for sex appeal.”

Nevertheless, Peterson and other analysts said Honda should not have a problem finding buyers for the limited number of S2000s it will produce. But that limited number also means that the S2000 is less about making money than an opportunity for Honda to reinforce its image as a maker of sporty cars.

“They’re looking at 5,000 units a year, which is nothing, and they should be able to do that,” said Dean Benjamin, president of Manhattan Beach-based consulting firm Autosource Inc. “With volumes that low it really is just a halo car for Honda.”

The S2000 “is something you don’t have a business case for, but it’s worth its weight in gold in free publicity,” Peterson added.

Indeed, if there is one thing the S2000 already is doing, it’s generating buzz.

Even before its official unveiling last week, the car was showing up on “what’s in” lists for 1999, and aside from Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln Blackwood SUV-truck hybrid it was grabbing the most attention of any production car at the auto show’s media days last week.

After the buzz dies down, the S2000 will have to take on the competition BMW’s Z3, Porsche AG’s Boxster, DaimlerChrysler AG’s Mercedes-Benz SLK and Mazda Motor Corp.’s ever-popular Miata.

Company officials insist that the S2000 will not compete head on with any of those cars because of its anticipated price. The Honda will sell for about $30,000, compared with $19,770 for an entry-level Miata, $40,000 for a Mercedes, and $41,000 for a Boxster. The Z3 has a comparable base price of $29,950, but when its horsepower is brought in line to SLK’s, the price jumps to $42,700.

“Thirty thousand is a good value when you’re talking about the prices of the other guys,” said Peterson of AutoPacific.

Nevertheless, said Benjamin of Autosource, roadster buyers might be tempted either to save money and buy a Mazda, or to spend extra for a BMW, Mercedes or Porsche.

“The problem is, not many people want to spend $30,000 on a Honda,” he said.

The S2000 will be built at Honda’s manufacturing plant in Tochigi, Japan. Advertising will be handled by Santa Monica-based Rubin Postaer and Associates, American Honda’s longtime ad agency and the second-largest ad firm in L.A. County. Honda officials say it is too long before the car’s U.S. release to know how advertising for the car will be handled, but analysts say that, given the car’s limited production, advertising is not likely to be extensive.