► 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.

Although in their twilight years, there are still manual gearboxes on simpler, cheaper cars and some very expensive ones; traditional torque-converter autos, which simply slur between cogs; one-speed Continuously Variable Transmissions, or CVTs, which make your car sound like your washing machine on fast spin cycle; dual-clutch gearboxes like Volkswagen’s DSG, which execute rifle-bolt changes in the blink of an eye; electric vehicles, which do away with gearboxes altogether; and now – drumroll please – a new type of transmission called S+ Shift, which debuts on the box-fresh 2026 Honda Prelude coupe.

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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.

There’s an efficiency-tuned 2.0-litre petrol engine mated to an electric motor and, in true hybrid style, the electronics govern the switchover between combustion and electric motion for maximum efficiency or performance, depending on the driver’s whim. Where it gets interesting is the single direct-drive gear, which is more akin to the drivetrain in an EV: technically, there is no gearbox whatsoever. Around town and in most everyday driving, the new Prelude drives like an electric car using just the e-motor but, at higher speeds, a clutch engages the engine to drive the front wheels directly through a single fixed ratio. For much of the time, the engine is used as a generator, like in a range-extender hybrid.

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.

The central idea is that it mimics physical gearshifts, despite the powertrain not having any ratios. It does this by interrupting the torque from the motor, to give the effect of dipping the clutch and interrupting drive; this is accompanied by the car’s electronic brain revving the petrol engine to match a simulated gearchange – and its repertoire includes regular or rushed cog-swaps, up and down the ’box. The blipping and rev-matching on downshifts is a thing of aural beauty, each tug on a steering wheel paddle eliciting a crescendo of revs and a jolt your body can feel. It’s a feeling amplified by the S+ Shift’s rev counter, showing the engine speed rising and falling.

Does it work?

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.

Best news of all? The clever transmission doesn’t dent the impressive economy from Honda’s hybrid powertrain; you’d think you might be burning more fuel by revving the engine for your aural delectation, but we struggled to push the economy below 50mpg, even when pressing on. It’s an impressive bit of kit.