► Honda Prelude tested
► We try it out its novel gearing
► Fad or actually fun?
Thought you knew car gearboxes? It’s not as clear-cut as it used to be. The days of a simple choice between manual or automatic transmissions are long gone, as buyers are confronted with a baffling array of technological choices when it comes to shifting gear.
It’s the first Prelude sold globally since 2001 and it’s typical of Honda that it’s come up with a novel way of swapping cogs. Never a company to follow convention, the newcomer takes the hybrid powertrain from the Honda Civic family hatchback and adapts it for use in a coupe – with a surprising technical flourish.
Honda calls this an eCVT gearbox in the Civic and the new 2026 Prelude, arriving in UK showrooms this month priced from £39,595, introduces the S+ Shift feature, which cleverly programmes fake ‘gearchanges’ to replicate the up- and downshifts you’ll enjoy in a race-style twin-clutch auto or a well-driven manual.
Absolutely, it does. Most of the time, you can leave the Honda Prelude in D for Drive and you’d easily be fooled that this is a conventional automatic transmission. The engine behaves like a normal petrol motor, revs rise and fall, progress is easy and unstressed. But press the prominent S+ Shift button on the centre console, engage with the paddles behind the steering wheel, and you can play Lewis Hamilton to your heart’s content, tapping up and down the gears. Every gearshift is pitch-perfect, S+ Shift acting as software theatre designed to make the car feel more like a traditional sports car. If anything, we just wish it sounded a little louder and more raucous in Sport mode, as the civilised petrol engine fails to excite as much as a Honda VTEC engine from a decade ago.
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Honda's new S+ Shift creates fake gear changes in a gearless hybrid transmission for sports car feel.
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This tech could reshape how hybrids deliver driving excitement without sacrificing efficiency.
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The Prelude returns after 23 years with this innovative system starting at £39,595.