S2000, how reliable/economic?

[chris watton]

Cheers for all the advice guys much appreciated
Still not decided though! LOL

OK, who's been trashing their S2000's to make the premium so darn high, own up????

[lurking lawyer]

Gazboy said:

Premiums are high because it's Japanese. Parts cost an utter fortune, and take a while to ship over- thus long car hire expenses.

No, they're not. They're expensive because so many people who aren't used to driving RWD or to a lightweight roadster with no traction control or other driver aid end up putting them into hedges or armcos.

It's purely down to the frequency with which this happens and the average cost of putting it right - around £6,000 in my case when I spun mine into an armco on a motorway slip road in the teeming rain.

[MrV]

Much as I agree with the LL about the amount of S's that manage to go sideways into something

Hasnt the S always been group 20, now you cant tell me the insurence bods knew from the begining that higher amounts where going to be written off than any other sports car ,or can you


Does anyone know of a stats table showing the percentage of crashes per marque of car ,I would be interested to see if the S has a higher crash per car ratio than any other

james

[chris watton]

A 400BHP Tuscan S is even cheaper than an S2000 to insure! by £100! I would have thought that reletively, there have been more Tuscan crashes/fatalities than the S2000?

(I thought, also, that the S2000 was built here!)

[Neil_H]

Gazboy said:

That argument would hold more water (no pun intended), and I'm not saying you are wrong, if it wasn't for the fact that you could insure a TVR for far less dosh. Take the Skyline GTR for example, loaded with driver aids, four wheel drive, and yet has some insane premiums.

The Skyline was only sold in very limited numbers over here - there are less than 200 official R33 and R34 GTRs in the UK. This means parts are just as difficult to come by as if the car were never sold over here as dealers don't just have Skyline stock lying around. They're also a major theft target (primarily for the parts ironically), whereas the S2000 isn't.

TVRs are sold in lower numbers to less mainstream buyers and I imagine are written off less frequently, in addition to being easier to fix being handbuilt and far less complex. A car's power is only part of the equation, the cost of fixing it is what counts.

The S2000 is easy to break and expensive to fix, both labour and parts. The rear quarter panel for example takes a bodyshop around 16 hours to replace. That's one panel!!!!! Add in the cost of the panel itself and a respray and you're looking at a couple of grand for what could be purely cosmetic damage.