News that the upcoming Honda Prelude will feature a fake transmission has caused some consternation among enthusiasts in the various parts of the internet where we are currently spreading. There are a fair number of skeptics, and not a lot of unbridled enthusiasm.
In their previous incarnations, Preludes were among the best affordable driver’s coupes on the market, with high-revving VTEC engines paired with good manual gearboxes.
There are many people – and I will admit that I am one of them – who mourn the demise of such cars.
Some say then that Honda should fit the new Prelude with a proper manual box, as you can still get an Integra in some markets, and deal with the inefficiency, because the Prelude is a sports coupe.
Others say Honda should even get rid of the idea of a transmission, because it’s clearly not real and we should grow up and get over ourselves, because this transmission is trying to fool us.
As Cypher said in the 1999 movie The Matrix (just the latest cultural reference for you, reader): “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it’s tasty and delicious.”
I can see that hating fake technology is a worthwhile argument as well.
In the end, it is a fake technology. What the Prelude’s new S+ Shift system will do is use hybrid technology but make it less efficient while still not being true.
As noted on page 11, it has a smart way of working, developed from the newer Civic transmission. This is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a CVT (continuously variable transmission), when it is nothing of the sort.
It’s somewhat unhelpful that the electronic CVT is what Honda initially indicated. It’s kind of the opposite, because it’s not a CVT at all.
The vast majority of the time the gasoline engine operates solely as a generator, providing electricity to the electric traction motor that does all the driving. In the Civic, the engine sometimes drives the wheels itself as well, but only through one fixed ratio at highway-type speeds.
Most of the time it’s just coupled to a system that produces electricity, with the motor doing the driving.