The biggest obstacle in the way of the S2000 replacement is the absence of a suitable platform. Honda is committing to a new global architecture for front-wheel-drive cars, including the next generation of Civic, which is due on sale in the UK in 2017, but its opportunities to spread the costs of a rear-wheel drive chassis are more limited.

It is therefore likely to pitch the car as a more expensive rival to the MX-5 in a bid to maintain workable margins, with pricing starting north of £20,000. It could slot the model into the line-up of its premium Acura brand in the United States, where it would be a rival to BMW’s next Z4 and the Audi TT Roadster.

Honda has been working on a number of sports car projects as it looks to rebuild its reputation as a manufacturer of enthusiasts’ models as well as more mainstream products and capitalise on its struggling F1 programme with McLaren.

It is understood that a mid-engined, turbocharged ‘baby NSX’ is also under consideration, but company officials have prioritised a return to the open-top two-seater market.

Honda’s global boss, Takahiro Hachigo, recently revealed that despite the NSX’s trick hybrid set-up, future sports cars from the company would not all need to have electric motors in their powertrains. “Whether or not we develop a hybrid depends on the type of car,” he said. “It is not the case that we have a fixed notion that a sports car always has to be a hybrid.”

Honda has decided that the diminutive S660 roadster that’s sold in Japan would not have a broad enough appeal to justify homologation in other markets. Hachigo said: “If there is strong demand from a region then we will always consider possibilities, but the S660 is a car that was developed for the Japanese market and we’d have to do a lot of work on it to make it comply with European regulations. I also wonder: would a car like this, sold in Asia, succeed in Europe?”

He did admit that Honda was considering sports cars beyond the NSX, however. “We are receiving requests from our regions who are saying they would like more sports cars, so we are considering ways to do that,” he added.

Engineers have also been working on a four-motor, all-electric sports car, as demonstrated by the SH-AWD CR-Z that finished 11th in this year’s Pikes Peak hillclimb in Colorado, but the commercialisation of that project faces a number of challenges, not least the cost of the lithium ion battery technology required to deliver the targeted range of 300 miles per full charge.Hachigo admitted that Honda had damaged its image by “abandoning” products such as the S2000 that had a strong reputation and hardcore fan base. The firm did have plans for a successor to the second generation of the car, but these were scrapped in the midst of the global automotive and financial crises in 2009.

It is believed that the firm’s European boss, Toshiaki Mikoshiba, has been given specific targets to improve continuity and nurture customer retention, as well as reducing the gap between product launches in Japan and the US and the arrival of those cars in Europe. The new HR-V and Jazz — plus the newly launched US-market Civic — are seen as prime examples of cars taking too long to reach European customers.