A Higher-Grade Honda

The materials used throughout also appear to match the Acura's higher-grade stuff, which we'd expect; although regular Civic cabins are extremely nice, they have less soft-touch and leathery bits. Things get interesting down in the center console, where there is a smattering of parts-bin Honda controls from other models, including the pushbutton/pull-tab gear selector and the current Civic's drive mode selector tab and electronic parking brake switch. But we also spy something new: a round glossy black button labeled "S+".

We've already popped enthusiasts' balloons with the news that, no, the Prelude won't bring back Honda's unusual hybrid-powertrain-with-a-manual-transmission layout. (Past Honda hybrids have offered the combo, including early Civic hybrids as well as the original Insight.) With no stick shift on offer, there is still hope that Honda will find a way to make the Prelude's hybrid setup interesting. That's where that S+ button comes into play—we figure Honda will tune the hybrid to "fake" up- and downshifts of a transmission even more aggressively than it does for the Civic Hybrid, even though the Prelude won't have a traditional transmission at all.

This all comes down to software trickery. Like the Civic Hybrid, the Prelude will use a gas four-cylinder engine as, essentially, a generator, feeding power to the battery and larger of the hybrid system's two electric motors via the smaller starter/generator. While the gas engine can clutch into a single-speed drive and power the wheels during full throttle runs or at higher speeds (like on the highway) when it's more efficient to do so, most of the time motivation will come from the electric motor. On the Civic Hybrid, Honda tunes the engine to briefly torque-dip, or ease up a little, during acceleration to lend the powertrain the sensation of gearshifts like you get in a typical automatic transmission. The dip is unnecessary for the car's functionality, of course, but having it avoids the engine droning too out of sync with vehicle speed and acceleration, an unsatisfying byproduct of using it for generator duty. For the Prelude's S+ function, expect the engine's play-acting of shifts to get more pronounced, but we're still waiting on final details from Honda. As for the shift paddles behind the steering wheel, they could offer driver control over these faux shifts or simply control the electric motor's regen levels as they do in the Civic and Accord hybrids.