Anyone who ever drove one of the '60s roadsters knows the ride is supposed to be a little rugged, the passenger compartment a bit cramped and the noise a bit on the wild side. That's the way it is in the S2000, as evidenced by one of my co-workers' comment after she went for a ride in this beauty. And there's not much room inside. Maybe it is a macho thing, but I don't think so. I know lots of men and women who owned and thoroughly enjoyed the Spitfires and Tigers and such, even if those vehicles did ride a bit like trucks.
Most convertibles shake and shimmy over every little bump.
The S2000 holds together and takes a bump in one big lump the way a performance car should. Cross beams and a reinforced center tunnel help create this rigidity at the bottom to compensate for the lack of continuity in the structure at the top. These reinforcements intrude a bit on the passenger space, but I can live with that. I took this baby around some tight turns and hilly curves that would challenge most decent sporty coupes, and the S2000 showed me what I had traded that interior comfort for. This is a car that is meant to be driven by someone who likes to drive, and for that, it takes a manual gearbox.