This Viper V10-Swapped Honda S2000 Took Nine Years To Finish, Builder Deserves Your Respect

These are the brothers and sisters in our community who so often go unappreciated. Say hi to Ralf, he's got a build he's been working on for the better part of a decade.

This is not an early-noughties Honda S2000. Well, it sort of is. It certainly was when it was new. But as Ralf's been detailing on his fledgling YouTube page, the results of projects he's worked on and off on for the last nine years and change are far from what it was the day it left the factory. Gone is the magnificent F20C four-cylinder engine with VTEC that came to define the breed its entire life. One can only hope the old engine finds a loving home after it is ripped from this Honda's engine bay.

But never mind about the old engine. That'll all come out in the washing, as they say. What's in its place is nothing short of astonishing. It's the 8.3-liter naturally-aspirated V10 you'd find in the Dodge Viper SRT-10 produced around the same time as the donor car. Over the course of no less than three presidential cycles and over a hundred months of on-again-off-again work and toil, Ralf painstakingly mounted custom hardware to pair the massive engine to the body, modified and re-enforced the firewall, and made everything fit nice and snug.

It can't be understated how colossally difficult a venture like this must have been with a bare minimum of help along the way. In hindsight, it's baffling that it didn't take 15 or even 20 years to complete this project. But Ralf found a way to make his vision manifest. The engine did fit underneath the hood – complete with forged ACR pistons and aftermarket heads, no less. It's not known whether the stock Honda six-speed manual gearbox remains. But it stands to reason, given the Ford Explorer 8.8-inch rear end, that it could be a beefier Tremec or ZF transmission instead.

Add Penske dual-way adjustable coilovers with AP Racing Pro brake discs up front and Wilwoods in the back, and this barely 3,100-lb pocket rocket is the envy of any hill climb. But also, you're liable to come across the drag strip, drift competitions, or any Cars & Coffee meet. Check out Ralf's YouTube channel here if you want to see more. It's a total riot to see such a tiny drop-top produce V10 noises you thought only cars double its size would ever make, about as glorious as it sounds.