Honda S2000 AP1, called 25 Aug 2026.

A 2000-build Honda S2000 AP1 running on Collecting Cars out of Jimboomba, Queensland — yellow over black, Australian-delivered and complied January 2001, showing 255,519 kilometres, at NO RESERVE and with registration not included in the sale.

A quarter of a million kilometres is 1.8 times what this record expects of the model, and it is beyond anything the Australian market has ever transacted: no S2000 above 200,000 kilometres has sold at public auction in this country, and two have failed trying — 277,001 kilometres at Grays in April 2024, withdrawn after 101 bids, and 241,302 kilometres at this same house in March 2026. Neither platform published where the bidding stopped.

The valuer works the odometer at 1.4 per cent of value per 10,000 kilometres and then refuses to move any reading further than twelve per cent. On this car the raw term is minus sixteen and the cap takes it to minus twelve, so the cap itself only costs four points, about $1,600. The real problem is the 1.4 per cent. It is fitted to the middle of the Australian record, where it is right - between roughly 100,000 and 170,000 kilometres this market barely charges for distance at all, and four recorded sales in that band land within $6,000 of each other on kilometre spreads of nearly sixty thousand. A straight line through that middle says a quarter of a million kilometres is worth about twelve per cent. Matched-market evidence says it is worth about forty: a British pair at 170,600 against 100,150 kilometres runs minus thirty-six, and an American pair at 252,700 against 103,000 runs minus forty-one. The curve is flat in the middle and steep in the tail, and a linear model cannot be both. This call is written on the tail, not on the line, and the $33,000 is published beside it so the disagreement is visible rather than quietly resolved.

Nine Australian AP1 results now sit in this library and between roughly 100,000 and 170,000 kilometres they barely move: $38,000 at 118,642, $35,600 at 165,562, $33,300 at 130,513, $31,750 at 107,241 — and in two of those pairs the higher-kilometre car made more. With something like 1,450 AP1s ever landed here and two road-registered S2000s of any kind advertised nationally, scarcity flattens the curve. That flatness stops before 200,000 and this car is well past it.

A clean Australian-delivered AP1 at about 120,000 kilometres is a $40,000 hammer in August 2026 money. The matched-market discounts for this distance — a British pair at 170,600 against 100,150 kilometres running minus thirty-six per cent, an American pair at 252,700 against 103,000 running minus forty-one — bracket the answer tightly, and Australia, America and Britain sit within about ten per cent of each other at mid-distance, which is what makes those ratios transferable. Forty per cent off $40,000 is $24,000. Take five per cent for aftermarket suspension of unknown age and origin, and four per cent for the registration not being included, on a market whose two weakest results were both unregistered cars, and the arithmetic lands at $21,900.

The AP1 roof uses a plastic rear window that yellows and cracks under Australian sun; the later top uses heated glass. It costs about $3,300 fitted and Australian specialists advertise it as a feature. On a concours car it would be a small originality hit. On a 255,000-kilometre driver it is money the next owner does not have to spend, and it is treated as neutral.

Slightly above the arithmetic and deliberately. No reserve on a genuinely scarce car draws bargain-hunters who then bid each other up, national supply is close to zero, and yellow is an upside variable this record scores at zero because no Australian sale of a yellow S2000 exists to measure.

The roughly 4,000 figure describes Spa Yellow Pearl, an American and European colour Australia never received. The Australian car is Indy Yellow Pearl, the local name for Rio Yellow, and the same dataset puts that at about 2,700 — and both counts come from a source whose total matches United States production alone. Yellow was better than a fifth of one American model year. It is not rare.

Australian S2000 pricing is demonstrably insensitive to kilometres, the car is Australian-delivered rather than an import, the PPSR and written-off checks are clear, and there is a May 2026 service at 245,000 kilometres with documentation.

At this distance the clutch, differential and second and third synchros are all at or past service life and none is documented; that is $3,000 to $5,500 of exposure against a car worth low twenties. The valvetrain ends the engine after one over-rev, and oil consumption of a litre per 1,000 kilometres is normal rather than a fault.

Six stock Australian AP1 results now fit against distance at MINUS 0.920 - the tightest correlation measured anywhere in this library - and imply 5.66 per cent per 10,000 kilometres. Extended naively to this car's 255,519 kilometres that line returns about $4,500, which is not a valuation: it is a straight line asked to travel 110,000 kilometres past its furthest data point. What it does establish is direction and steepness.

A turbocharged AP1 at 241,302 kilometres was offered at Carnes Hill, New South Wales in March 2026 and did not sell. That is the nearest comparable in existence to this car and the market declined it at any price. Two more Australian AP1s failed in the same quarter, at 143,057 and 79,395 kilometres.

This lot is at NO RESERVE, so it will sell, and the floor is whatever the room gives on the day rather than whatever a vendor will accept. The lowest stock result in the Australian record is $29,751 at 135,546 kilometres. Applying the matched international high-distance discounts this thesis already cites - minus 36 per cent British, minus 41 per cent American - to the $31,750 result at 107,241 kilometres gives $18,700 to $20,300. $19,000 is that range, and it is below the old call because three Australian no-sales in one quarter is a demand signal the first version did not have. Predicted hammer $15,500 to $23,000, midpoint $19,000.

This thesis said the car was offered with registration not included and took four per cent off for it.

- the registration paragraph in a Collecting Cars listing is the standard notice about CHERISHED PLATES and appears on every lot the house sells. It was never a statement that this car is unregistered. The seller has now answered the question directly in the lot comments: the car is currently registered in New South Wales, and nothing about it would stop a Pink Slip or registration in another state. The deduction is void and the call moves $19,000 to $19,800.

No S2000 has transacted in Australia since the 26 August revision, so the nine-result AP1 fit, the minus 0.920 correlation, the three Australian no-sales in one quarter and the matched British and American high-distance discounts all stand exactly as written. The published band, $18,700 to $20,300, is untouched; the call had been sitting $500 under its own midpoint partly for a reason that turned out not to exist, and it now sits just above it.

So this is the whole of the revision: one deduction, four per cent, fully attributable. If the lot is already bid past $19,800 then this revision changes nothing about how it grades, and it will not be moved again on bidding behaviour.

Kilometres, 110,000 past the furthest point in the Australian record, on a no-reserve lot that will therefore sell. Predicted hammer $16,000 to $23,000, midpoint $19,800.