- Viral check confirmed an 8.28-second 0–60 mph run for the brand new Prelude.
- Improper launch method and pretend shifts skewed the check’s accuracy.
- Japanese check recorded 7.2 seconds utilizing appropriate hybrid launch technique.
Honda fanatics have been asking the identical query ever because the new Prelude arrived carrying a hybrid badge and boasting simply 200 hp (203 PS): Is that sufficient?
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And this week, the web thought it received its reply when the AeroflowDynamics YouTube channel posted the primary zero to 60 mph check of a US-spec automotive, clocking a glacial 8.28 seconds. Cue panic, disappointment, and Type R followers doing laps of victory across the feedback part.
Related: Delusional Honda Dealers Marking Up New Prelude To Over $60,000
But earlier than we escape the pitchforks and accuse Honda of murdering yet one more childhood dream, we have to discuss how skilled acceleration testing really works.
This explicit video is about as legitimate as comparisons between this 12 months’s 25 percent-cheaper slimmed-down Walmart Thanksgiving bundle and final 12 months’s pricier, however fuller unfold.
How Accurate Are These Tests?
For starters, the driving force used the Prelude’s simulated gearshift mode, a novelty setting meant to make the hybrid powertrain really feel prefer it has precise gears. It’s enjoyable, however positively not as environment friendly as letting the engine do its personal factor, though which means listening to it blare out a tuneless fastened rpm moo like a generator gone haywire.
Proof? A Japanese video utilizing the proper highway tester launch method – construct torque towards the brake, depart the paddles alone, and let the hybrid system do its factor – recorded 7.2 seconds to a non-GPS-verified 62 mph (100 kmh). That identical automotive and driver had posted a far slower 9.1-second run only a few days earlier, proper after it was first delivered.
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Granted, that also isn’t Type R territory, however nobody who’d seen the ability figures anticipated it to be.
Always Loosen-up Before Exercise
But even that 7.2-second determine needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The US tester had simply 66 miles on the odometer whereas the Japanese Prelude had lined 699 miles (1,125 km) on the time of the second check and it’s well-known that vehicles typically go faster as soon as they’ve loosened up, even when it’s tenths of a second.
While not as crucial because it was once with fashionable manufacturing precision, many producers nonetheless suggest a brief break-in interval, and adaptive ECUs additionally are likely to sharpen when you’ve put some miles on the automotive.
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It does, nonetheless, rely upon the mannequin and the producer. As Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained identified a couple of years in the past, the second-generation Acura NSX left the manufacturing unit with its engine already damaged in earlier than reaching clients.
What Else Matters?
In a former life I used to be an Autocar.co.uk highway tester and recorded 8-second and 6.5-second zero to 60 mph runs from supposedly equivalent Seat Leon Cupra Rs, the distinction being chalked all the way down to the next mileage and gas octane ranking on the speedy one.
Other elements professional testers geek out on that we don’t know right here embody the altitude, highway, tire and air temperatures, and wind pace and path, if any.
But we do know that the 2 vehicles had been solely timed in a single path, moderately than averaged from two opposing runs, they usually weren’t logged utilizing correct GPS gear that may precisely decide when the wheels start to show and a real pace.
So no, the viral 8.28-second run isn’t the ultimate phrase, although it’s consultant of how briskly most house owners will go. The final quantity might be decrease and solely revealed as soon as correct journal testing is full.
The 6.2 seconds Car and Driver extracted from a Civic Hybrid sedan that has a really comparable curb weight and equivalent 200 hp hybrid powertrain (bar the digital shifts) provides us our greatest information.
Yes, C&D deducts 0.3 seconds of rollout, however even adjusting for that, the numbers point out the Prelude has extra potential than YouTube’s first impression suggests.
More to automotive than a 0-60 time
Whatever it pulls off in optimum situations, the Prelude’s 60 mph stats are by no means going to get anybody excited in an period of 4- and 5-second scorching hatches, particularly not at $42,000, not to mention on the $60K markups we’ve seen from sellers making an attempt to money in.
But it might be unfair to trash a whole automotive based mostly on the way it handles that one bizarre yardstick, which tells little or no about how a automotive performs general. Just ask a Miata proprietor.
The solely proper plan of action is to check drive a Prelude for your self and see if these Type-R suspension goodies make up within the corners for it feeling lower than Type R-athletic on the straights.
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