Sports car news: Hyundai wavers, Honda prepares and Nissan withdraws

It's a bit of a mixed bag of news today if you're a fan of sports cars. On the really, really good side of things is word that Honda is serious about building a successor to the semi-legendary S2000 sports car, which went out of production almost a decade ago. The fires of this particular rumour were stoked recently when Honda opened a new R&D facility in Silicon Valley, and released photos of a previously unseen compact mid-engined coupe.

The internet went, predictably, nuts over the idea of a new small Honda sports car, one to accompany the upcoming new NSX hybrid supercar. Honda poured cold water on the subject though, saying that the car was merely a styling study, done some time ago by its advanced design studio in Los Angeles. However, that was followed by a leak of patent drawings Honda filed to copyright the look and styling of a new car, one that bears obvious visual similarities to the new NSX, but which is clearly smaller and which seems to have a soft-top convertible roof.

The rumours now started to firm up - Honda will launch the car in 2018, according to sources. It will use the same 313hp turbocharged 2.0-litre VTEC engine as recently seen in the Civic Type-R and will be a rival to the Porsche Boxster and Cayman, the Alfa Romeo 4C and high-end versions of the Audi TT. Weight is expected to be kept below the 1,400kg mark.

We had been hoping that Hyundai, too, would enter this mid-engined sports car market. Last year, on the fringes of the Paris motor show, Hyundai showed off a design study of a compact, mid-engined coupe with razor-crease styling and power apparently coming from the 200hp 1.6 turbo engine found in the Kia Cee'd GT and the upcoming Hyundai i30 Turbo.

Sadly, while that design was well-received at the time, it seems as if Hyundai won't be going down the sports car road any time soon. Speaking to Autocar magazine, Tony Whitehorn, Hyundai's UK boss said that "not many people make money out of sports cars. The sports car market is shrinking dramatically, and even firms with heritage and a great product are struggling. Aside from the Audi TT and Mazda MX-5, it is a tough place to be."

Finally, there's more sad news from Nissan, as it is withdrawing its troublesome Nismo GT-R LM Le Mans racer from the World Endurance Championship until such time as it can work out why the car's not working. The GTR-LM was a surprise entry for this year's Le Mans 24hrs, and with its radical front-engine layout, it seemed an innovation too far.

Sadly, so it proved - the cars were way off the pace of the front-running Audis and Porsches and only one of the Nissans managed to limp to the finish of the race. Problems with the hybrid drivetrain meant that the car had to run in petrol-power only, dramatically reducing its speed, while issues with the front suspension and brakes meant that drivers couldn’t attack the kerbs on some of the key corners, costing seconds per lap.

Now, Nissan will withdraw the car from competition and go back to testing until it figures out what's wrong. Thankfully then it's not a total end to the innovative programme, more a pause until the bugs can (hopefully) be worked out. "We know people will be disappointed, but be assured that nobody is more disappointed than us," said Shoichi Miyatani, president of Nismo, Nissan's motorsport arm.. "We are racers and we want to compete, but we also want to be competitive. That is why we have chosen to continue our test program and prepare the GT-R LM Nismo for the strong competition we face in the World Endurance Championship. When you innovate, you don't give up at the first hurdle. We are committed to overcoming this challenge."