[JRinKY]

I'm willing to bet that Stacey hasn't driven a Sky or an S2000. I'm thinking 14 years old, with too many car magazine subscriptions.

While the S2000 has more HP, it has less torque than the Sky, and it only weighs 80 lb less. The torque and HP peaks are 2000 RPM higher than the Sky's, so you'll have to rev the guts out of the engine to get the performance it has to offer. The 0-60 time is a bit better, 6.4 seconds vs our 7.4, but skid pad performance is about even at 0.9g. The S2000 has a shorter final drive ratio, and that, combined with a peaky engine, makes the 6-speed a requirement. Two of the road tests I read resulted in wasted clutches, burned up trying to get the car to launch during the acceleration tests. Yes, the S2000 is abetter performer, but it isn't a night-and-day difference, for almost $10k more. And we won't even talk about looks. Oh yeah, it does have a bigger trunk.

The fact that Honda is the only engine in the IRL does not speak so much to the performance of the engines, as it does to business decisions by auto company executives, although no one would dispute that it is a fine racing engine. Engine manufactures in top-tier racing spend huge amounts of money on development and support, and the value to real-world street-car engineering has been debated again and again. As has the cachet given to race winners (Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday). Honda thinks the IRL is a good investment, others did not, so Honda has it all to itself.

I apologise for using up bandwidth to feed a troll, but I couldn't help myself.