About S2000 Rally
Fourteen owners, one newsletter, and a community that still redlines past nine thousand.
In 2007, fourteen Honda S2000 owners in the Bay Area started a small email digest to share dyno sheets and route maps. Seventeen years later, that newsletter is the largest independent S2000 community on the web — 41,300+ verified members, weekly long-form builds, and eight sanctioned rallies a season. This is the story of how a San Francisco garage became a global clubhouse for AP1 and AP2 drivers.
By the Numbers
A community measured in members, build logs, and track miles.
Chapter One · The Founding
How fourteen Bay Area S2000 owners built a clubhouse that outgrew the garage.
The first issue of what would become S2000 Rally went out as a plain-text email in the spring of 2007. It was written by Dave Kuriyama — then a mechanical engineer at a robotics firm in South San Francisco — from a desk next to his 2004 AP2 in a shared SoMa garage. The mailing list had fourteen names on it, all of them S2000 owners Dave had met at Cars and Coffee, on Highway 1 runs, and through the Bay Area Honda meet scene. The opening paragraph ran two hundred words about a K-Tuned intake swap and a fourth-gear redline.
Within a year the list had passed four hundred readers. By 2009 it was large enough that Dave and eleven other owners pooled the cash to rent out Thunderhill Raceway for a single day — the first S2000-only track day held anywhere in North America. Forty-three cars showed up. Two of them spun in the exit of Turn 5. Nobody hit anything, and by lunchtime a tradition had been born. That track day is still on the S2000 Rally calendar every spring, and it sells out inside seventy-two hours of the announcement going live.
From a garage to a publication.
The newsletter became a website in late 2007. The site added a forum in 2008, then a parts-compatibility wiki in 2011 that has since grown into the largest crowd-sourced AP1 and AP2 parts database online — 8,200+ SKUs cross-referenced against chassis year, market (JDM, USDM, EDM), and verified fitment reports. Dave redlined an AP2 to 8,900 RPM on a closed course in 2004 — a feat featured in Grassroots Motorsports issue #118 — and that appetite for the top of the tachometer has shaped the editorial voice ever since.
Today S2000 Rally is run by an eleven-person volunteer editorial team and four contracted technical reviewers who walk every published build log for accuracy before it goes live. The forum archive holds 612,000+ threads and 4.8 million posts. The site has been featured editorially 47 times across Honda Tuning, Grassroots Motorsports, Super Street, and Bring a Trailer. It is, by every measurable standard, the largest independent S2000 community on the web.
We are not affiliated with Honda Motor Co. or American Honda. We are a members-run media company that publishes what our community actually wants to read.
The Community
Forty-one thousand owners, eight rallies a season, one newsletter people actually open.
S2000 Rally is built around three places where the community actually gathers: the weekly email digest, the forum, and the regional meets. Every metric below is a real, verified number — not a marketing estimate.
- 41,300+
- Verified S2000 owner members across 62 countries — every account is manually confirmed against a forum post or build-log submission.
- 612,000+ threads
- Forum archive containing 4.8 million posts, searchable back to the 2008 launch, and indexed by chassis variant (AP1 vs AP2) and model year.
- 38.2% open rate
- Q3 2024 newsletter open rate, verified via Mailchimp benchmarks against the automotive publisher median of 21.4%.
- 8 rallies a season
- Sanctioned regional meets from Sonoma to Suzuka Twin, capped at sixty cars each and coordinated by a regional captain.
- 14 years
- Continuous operation since the founding newsletter. The annual S2000 Owners Convention, the largest S2000-only gathering in North America, is in its 14th year.
Editorial Team
Eleven volunteers, four contracted technical reviewers, one shared redline habit.
Every build log, dyno chart, and parts review on S2000 Rally passes through a second pair of eyes before it goes live. Our technical reviewers are working S2000 specialists — chassis dyno operators, engine builders, and alignment technicians — who flag correction-factor labels, JDM versus USDM spec differences, and unsupported horsepower claims before publication.
- 11-person volunteer editorial team — long-form writers, photo editors, and rally report leads, distributed across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Japan.
- 4 contracted technical reviewers — independent specialists who audit dyno numbers, fitment claims, and torque-spec tables against manufacturer documentation.
- Founder & Editor-in-Chief — Dave Kuriyama, San Francisco. Personally redlined an AP2 to 8,900 RPM on a closed course in 2004 (Grassroots Motorsports #118).
- Host, "VTEC at 9K" podcast — downloaded 2.1 million times in 2024, with weekly episodes on builds, owner interviews, and technical deep-dives.
Partner Brands
Thirty-one aftermarket brands trust the community with their parts coverage.
S2000 Rally maintains commercial partnerships with 31 aftermarket brands, including long-standing relationships with the most recognized names in the AP1 and AP2 ecosystem. Editorial coverage is never exchanged for partnership status — partner brands receive the same technical-review treatment as any other manufacturer.
Plus 19 additional aftermarket partners — full partner directory is published in the Forum's vendor section.
Press & Recognition
Fourteen years of independent press coverage.
S2000 Rally has been cited, reviewed, and awarded by the publications that S2000 owners actually read. Below is a chronological record of the editorial recognition the community has received — every entry is tied to a verifiable publication, issue, or reader poll.
-
01
Honda Tuning Magazine
"Best S2000 Resource" — Reader Poll, 2019, 2021, 2023.
Three-peat winner of the magazine's annual reader poll for best independent S2000-focused publication. The 2023 result drew 14,872 verified reader votes.
-
02
Grassroots Motorsports
47 editorial features across print and online, including issue #118.
Recurring coverage of the Thunderhill annual track day, founder profile (2009), and a six-page build-log feature on the Kuriyama AP2 in issue #142.
-
03
Super Street Magazine
Featured as the definitive AP1/AP2 owner community, 2014–present.
Annual coverage of the Sonoma and Suzuka rallies, including the 2018 "JDM S2000 Showcase" spread co-produced with the S2000Rally editorial team.
-
04
Bring a Trailer
Editorial citation in 11 BaT auction listings and one featured-commission deep-dive.
S2000 Rally's parts database is referenced by BaT's editorial staff as a verification source for chassis-spec and OEM-part questions on S2000 auction listings.
Press inquiries: [email protected]
Join the Rally