Flipping over the S2000

Any car enthusiast worth his Michael Schumacher cap would drool at the prospect of wringing one of the finest top-down sports cars ever made — the Honda S2000 — on a high-speed track.

This is the car whose jewel-like 2.0-liter DOHC VTEC engine spins to a lofty 9000-rpm redline for a heady 240-hp rating, enough to push the car to speeds of 130 kph — in second gear. And I was privileged to be given the chance to do so right in Honda’s state-of-the-art R&D test track in Tochigi, Japan.

I was next in line to Manila Bulletin’s Anjo Perez (a good friend who still remains so to this day), two-time champion of the local Honda Media Challenge and whose driving skills I have always admired. Wanting to get to know the track before I took to it, I rode shotgun with him in a white Honda S2000. We had just begun the second lap of the track when Anjo lost it — in a big way.

He had just downshifted from 4th to 3rd gear as we approached a sweeping left-hand turn at about 130 kph. Although the lateral g-force was tremendous, I (and most likely Anjo, too) felt that the car, the tires and the driver were all capable of negotiating the curve at high speed, just as we had done in the previous corners.

But suddenly the rear end of the car swung sideways. Anjo caught it and held the slide for a heart-pounding couple of seconds, drifting the car sideways the way expert rally drivers do on gravel. But we were on sticky asphalt, and as soon as the tires regained their grip, the front tires — still pointed outwards in a classic countersteer - bit.

Suddenly the car pivoted and spun the other way. We were already at the edge of the track and when Anjo hit the brakes, we were already on the grass, hurtling backwards, mere passengers on what is definitely no longer a joyride.

The whole left side of the car (my side in this right-hand-drive car) slammed broadside into the steel guardrail - which fortunately for us, was lined by a heavy four-foot-thick foam barrier — at close to 100 kph. The impact bounced us into the air, flipping the car over and causing it to land upside down — my side of the windshield frame bending (but not collapsing) under the sheer force of the landing.

The tiny cockpit of the S2000 feels a thousand times tinier when it’s upside down, especially after you unbuckle your seatbelts and plunk down to earth. Your forehead rests on the dashboard, your hands and knees on the grass, and the seats press on your back — definitely no place for claustrophobics.

Within seconds, we hear people shouting in just about every Asian language (we were with other Asian journalists as guests of Honda for the Tokyo Motorshow). Ira Panganiban of ABS-CBN’s Alas Singko y Medya and Ramon Tomeldan of Manila Standard were two of a dozen or so people who reached us first and helped lift the car to allow us to crawl out.

Almost all of them, especially those who witnessed the incident, were amazed that we were able to walk away from the accident. A lady reporter from China was said to have turned hysterical when she saw the roofless car land upside down.

An ambulance arrived within a few minutes and we were whisked off to the on-site hospital for the obligatory check-up and x-rays, during which I had plenty of time to mull over the meaning of having two rollover accidents in four months. (I wrote about the first one, which happened when I was driving in a dirt rally, last June.)

My stocky 220-pound driver was fortunate to walk out of the ER with nothing more than grass stains as a souvenir. I had to wear a neck brace for a week, no thanks to the whiplash I sustained from the tremendous sideways impact. Had there been no foam barrier lining the guardrail, things could’ve turned out tragically different.

To its credit, the tiny S2000 (which is about the same size as a Mazda Miata) held up under the incredible impact. Its whole left side was flattened and the windshield shattered but overall, it was repairable. Even the engine was running as we remained upside down - too stunned to even notice it was on until people told us to shut it. The rollover bars — just a little bit higher than the seats and mounted right behind our heads — literally saved our necks.

All told, it was perhaps one of the most memorable moments I have had inside a car, upright or otherwise.