HONDA PRELUDE

Prototype reveals latest take on firm's innovative petrol-electric tech

- MATT PRIOR

The Honda Prelude is back. Almost. It’s at Thruxton as a prototype and been driven for a few minutes only, enough to get us used to its new hybrid drivetrain.

It uses the engine as a generator for its electric drive motor, rather than to power the wheels, so in that respect it’s a bit like in the Civic but supposedly more engaging.

The Civic donates the Prelude its architecture, plus its 2.0-litre Atkinson-cycle engine and a drive system, dubbed e:HEV.

It’s worth spending a bit of time on this because it’s not straightforward. When the Civic first arrived, Honda used the term e-CVT, or something like that, somewhat misleadingly.

An electric motor of around 180bhp (precise figure to be confirmed) drives the front wheels, with the engine generating its electricity. But Honda thinks that an electric motor alone offers insufficient driver interaction, and that an engine revving at a constant speed is particularly annoying.

So on the Civic there’s a system that simulates gearshifts. The engine revs change, seemingly as they do in a conventional automatic petrol car. But you can’t control those revs, and there is no actual gearbox. It just sounds like there is.

The Prelude moves this system on. Dubbed S+Shift, it not only mimics an eight-speed transmission but also lets you pick which fake gear ratio you're in, via gearshift paddles. This means it feels like any conventional flappy-paddle automatic, the significant difference being that the engine isn’t connected to the wheels.