Plextor Japan announced this week that it will be releasing an external version of the PlexWriter Premium2 in early June. The Premium2U reads and writes at 52x, rewrites at 32x and sports an 8MB buffer. The drive also supports Yamaha's Audio Master Quality Recording system as well as many of Plextor's advanced technologies, including GigaRec, VariRec and Q-Check.
Plextor has not announced a price yet. However, the Premium2U is expected to run about 19,980 Yen ($207US). While I can't see myself dropping that sort of cash on a CD writer based on a three year old drive design, there are probably plenty of Plextor fans and audiophiles out there that will.