Hard Work Pays Off

Building Honda’s Anniversary Roadster Proper, and on His Own Dime.

- Aaron Bonk

Tae Min Chang wants you to know something right away: He isn’t rich, nobody in his family is either, and he grinds it out six days a week at a dry cleaners just to build the sort of S2000 you wish you had.

Pressing dudes’ pinstriped shirts isn’t glamorous and it won’t get you laid, but for Tae, it’s enough to give him the sort of Honda roadster he’d always wanted. It just took a little time. “When the S2000 showed up on the market, I was amazed,” he says about the AP1 chassis that was introduced in ’99. “I went to the dealership to find out how much one would cost, and it came out to $800 a month and [another] $700 for insurance.” No amount of wool pants waiting to have Diet Coke stains cleaned off of them was gonna cover that, which meant Tae would have to wait.