New supercharged 'B25' S2000 revs to 10,000rpm

VTEC disciples, feast your eyes: there's a Bulletproof-built, 580hp special one in our midst

By Matt Bird / Friday, 7 November 2025 / Loading comments

Those who grew up on a diet of Gran Turismo, Fast & Furious and Need For Speed: Underground will probably agree that the early '00s represented a peak for modified car culture, with Japan leading the way. The base vehicles were great out of the box and offered up enormous tuning potential, which the aftermarket companies were only too happy to take advantage of. Once knowledge of those brands reached impressionable, game-playing fans, a global phenomenon was never going to be far behind. Just look at what Supra, Skylines, Evos and Imprezas cost now those kids are 20 years older…

Bulletproof Automotive was formed in the US in 2000 to take full advantage of the craze, to bring over those parts from Japan for enthusiasts to make this new breed of cars their own. Now 25 years old, it’s marking the big birthday with an epic celebration of Japanese tuning culture. This is BP25, a Honda S2000 ‘meshing the classic principles of Japanese tuning, brand new parts with top-shelf technology, and a connoisseur's vision to mesh the best of the best into one.’ There aren’t enough GT credits in the world to make something like this.

The spec sheet for BP25 reads like an aftermarket hall of fame: Spoon, Top Secret, Varis, Amuse, AEM, Mugen, and J’s Racing are all here, with more besides. But the engine comes from Bulletproof themselves, and looks set to steal the show even more than the standard unit: now supercharged and revving all the way to 10, it makes a peak of 580hp at 9,300rpm (!). Maybe there’s not quite a hundred grand under the hood of this S2000 like Johnny Tran’s, but it’s clearly a very special F20: Vortech supercharger, Amuse titanium exhaust manifold, uprated injectors and more. The aim was to ‘keep the original characteristics of the S2000 driving experience, high rpm thrills and a power band that builds and builds to encourage the driver to use all those rpms whenever possible.’ Nice. Almost 600hp reaches the rear wheels via a six-speed 'box from a later AP2 S2000 and an ASM x Drexler LSD.

The Varis Dark Panther widebody kit is here on an S2000 in the USA for the first time, and surely won’t be last, given how good it looks with the Spoon hardtop. The tyres are huge 295/30R19 Toyo Proxes, pushed out right to the edge of carbon arches and helping BP25 look meaner than any S2000 ever has; the wheels themselves are said to be inspired by Tsuchime, a Japanese hammered metal technique, and use technology from Unplugged Performance’s indestructible Tesla wheels (Unplugged being BP’s sister company). Like the rest of the 25 build, they look absolutely stunning.

This S2000 should drive as smartly as it looks, too, with Top Secret’s coilovers, additional bracing, new arms, adjustable camber and monster Brembo Pista brakes. It’s like Time Attack means concours, everything immaculate and yet also intended to make this little Honda as rapid as possible. The paint is Lamborghini Balloon White with gold accents, the same colour as used for BP’s Concept GT86 (that lapped Tsukuba as fast as a Ferrari 458).

Whether there will be any more BP25s than this one isn’t clear; you can bet a few successful millennial tech bros would love to add an S2000 just like this one to the collection. For now, it’s being exhibited at SEMA, to be gawped at along with everything else. Ben Schaffer, Founder of Bulletproof Automotive, said: "Pure driving pleasure never goes out of style. The S2000 is timeless, and for our 25th anniversary, we had to go back to the source. The BP25 is the result: a celebration of our love for JDM performance. We took that core high-revving, analogue purity and amplified it with 580 supercharged horsepower and the finest modern tech. This is its final form, delivering an ultimate, visceral high-thrill package that reminds everyone why they fell in love with driving and distills the appeal of Japanese sports cars into one intense package”. The love for this era of performance cars from Japan is going absolutely nowhere, that’s for certain. And if this is all the inspiration required for your own S2000 project, the classifieds are teaming with them. Overnighting parts from Japan will never have felt so thrilling…