Honda Prelude Type SH NOW A HOTTER, HIGHER-TECH SPORT COUPE by Mac DeMere PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEVIN WING
Perhaps we’re easily confused, but we’ve always thought of the Honda Prelude as a hot-performing, high-tech sporty car. It featured among the first appearances of anti-lock brakes, variable valve timing, four-wheel double-wishbone suspension, four-wheel steering, and fiber-reinforced cylinder blocks. With its sophisticated 16-valve DOHC VTEC engine pumping out an impressive 190 horsepower from just 2.2 naturally aspirated liters, it dashed 0-60 mph in a stout 6.7 seconds and topped out at an awesome 140 mph. Its well-tuned suspension created confidence-inspiring, easy-to-exploit extreme handling and lofty test-track highs of 0.89 g on the skidpad and 66.6 mph in the slalom.
Nevertheless, almost every remaining potential coupe customer (read: the few who hadn’t jumped on the sport/utility bandwagon) knew the Prelude as a stylish, reliable, practical near-luxury coupe. They probably called it "cute," "peppy," even "friendly." For ’97, Honda aspires to heighten this near-luxury image with chic new bodywork, refined ride quality, and a stylish and more commodious interior that, thanks to a 1.4-inch-longer wheelbase, now has a rear seat that will accommodate a pair of svelte, flexible adults for a trip to dinner, assuming the front couple is treating. Honda didn’t do anything to help us kick our image of the Prelude as a neck-snapping, pavement-rippling, trick-tech sporty car. Just the opposite.
Test-track numbers didn’t clear up the near-luxury/hot-performing confusion. On our first run in a Type SH prototype we ripped off a 7.0-second 0-60-mph sprint, the second-best Prelude time we’ve ever recorded, and its 121-foot 60-0-mph stopping distance was a new mark for Preludes. (Unfortunately, the test venue lacked facilities for full handling tests.) Can you keep a secret from those near-luxury coupe buyers? We’re not confused. The ’97 Prelude, at least its Type SH variant, is a hot-performing, high-tech sporty car.
With stagger, the tread of an Indy car’s taller right rear travels faster than that of its shorter left rear to help negotiate an oval’s left-only turns. ATTS duplicates stagger’s effect with computer-controlled, clutch-activated gear sets that divert power originally destined for the inside tire and employ it to speed up the outside tire. The system, which is wholly unlike a limited-slip differential, is positioned between the differential and the left halfshaft. The Prelude’s computer monitors steering-wheel angle, wheel-speed, lateral-acceleration, and, for all we know, ESPN2 to determine that you’re, say, blasting out of a left-hand freeway transition ramp, near the edge of tire adhesion, foot to the floor. Without ATTS, this is where the car would start to push toward the guard rail, and you’d have to get off the gas. With an 80-millisecond response time, the computer tells a linear solenoid to progressively direct hydraulic pressure from the ATTS’ dedicated pump to incrementally engage the appropriate clutch (similar to those found in automatic transmissions). The planetary gearset then steals torque intended for the left (or inside) tire and diverts it back through the differential, where it’s used to speed up the right tire. In extreme cornering, the ATTS shifts up to 80 percent of engine torque to the outside tire, which is spun up to 15 percent faster than the inside. The process works much like a kayaker paddles hard forward on the right side to make the canoe turn left. A side benefit of ATTS, though not directly attributable to the system, is a reduction in drop-throttle oversteer: Because there’s less understeer with ATTS, you’ll have less steering angle dialed in, so if you have to get off the gas in a corner, the car is less likely to tuck its nose toward the inside and spin out. Unfortunately for developers and marketers, this and many other technically advanced systems -- like anti-lock brakes and anti-spin-out yaw control systems -- are nearly invisible when they work. Without back-to-back comparisons, it’s difficult to judge whether if ATTS is worth its approximate $2000 premium, so you’ll just have to trust us: The ATTS-equipped Prelude Type SH has remarkably -- and usefully -- less power-on understeer and drop-throttle oversteer than a standard ’97 Prelude, and radically less of both than the ’96 Prelude VTEC, which we thought was a darn good handling car. Until now. Digital Manual Mimic
In normal operation, the new Prelude transmission challenges the best of today’s wondrous fleet of computer-controlled, seamless-shifting automatics. Also, thanks to its own dedicated 16-bit electronic brain and eight shift maps (Porsche’s Tiptronic transmission has but five), it thinks for itself to, for instance, downshift early on inclines. Switch to "Sequential Sport Shift" mode, and the driver is required to do the thinking. With a touch of the Indy car -- like sequential shifter, the Honda automatic snaps off sharp manual-transmission-like upshifts -- one-third faster than a conventional automatic -- and downshifts at your command. And only at your command. Like a manual and unlike the Tiptronic, the Honda won’t upshift until you push the shift lever. Stay away from the lever and keep your foot in it, and the engine will bounce off its rev limiter. Yet the transmission’s digital brain won’t allow downshifts at inappropriately high engine speeds. Opposite of shifter karts and Indy cars, the Prelude’s lever is pushed forward to change up, back to downshift. The reason: Honda felt most people are used to selecting lower gears on an automatic by pulling back, higher gears by pushing forward. In addition to its electronic brain, the flexibility and smoothness of the new Honda automatic can be credited to the electrically operated linear solenoids, which operate the tranny’s four clutches. While conventional solenoids are binary -- either on or off -- a linear solenoid can also activate any degree of clutch engagement in between to smooth or speed up the shifts. |
First, all ’97 Preludes come standard
with a stronger, 195-horsepower (190 when mated to an automatic) version of the 2.2-liter
VTEC four. Next, all get 1.0-inch-taller 16-inch aluminum wheels shod with 205/50VR16
Bridgestone Potenza RE92s. The options list includes an automatic transmission that’s
smarter than Porsche’s Tiptronic and probably than the space shuttle’s system as
well. And now there are only two Prelude flavors: regular and the advanced-technology Type
SH, which gets front suspension upgrades that, at the extreme edges of the envelope
(territory never intentionally visited by near-luxury coupe buyers), make it behave better
than a Vatican altar boy. The Type SH also comes with a torque-transfer system that slays
the dreaded power understeer. 
From the video explaining the Prelude Type SH’s Active Torque Transfer
System (ATTS), it’s clear Honda’s research and development engineers are glued
to the tube when Indy car racing is on. During those ESPN broadcasts, pit expert and
former Indy car driver Jon Beekhuis often explains "stagger" -- the oval-track
technique of employing a taller right rear tire -- by laying a paper cup on its side, with
its bottom to the left, and rolling it across a table; he points out that it turns left on
its own. Honda’s ATTS video contains an identical depiction. ATTS is the latest and
most technically advanced (Honda says it’s "a world’s first") weapon
in the war to quell front-wheel drive’s inherent power-on understeer. (If you
didn’t know, "Understeer" is when the front tires lose traction before the
rears, and the car slides, nose-first, wide of its intended arc.) 
We enjoy a lightning-fast
manual transmission upshift and a skillfully executed double-clutch downshift. If you want
this sensation but don’t want to row a manual in everyday driving, your choices have
been severely limited. Enter a provocative new offering: the ’97 Prelude’s very
sporty four-speed automatic.