VTEC on its own is a good invention but you have to keep it up on VTEC to get anywhere fast.
Honda's with STUPIDLY LOUD exhausts annoy me too - there's a goon near me with about 4 tonnes of Audio in his Civic and a MASSIVE "Phat" (or so i'm told) exhaust.
It screams its poor head off but gets overtaken my my brother in his modified 1.2 Corsa C LMAO!
S2k's are lush and are out of a completely different mould as the 2.0 engine has enough guts off vtec to keep up with other cars!
(And they look LUSH!)
End of the day its each to their own as there are some good VTEC engines out there but the older ones are showing their age now (Excluding the K20 and Type R)
Steve