2000 Honda Prelude 2.2 VTI Motegi

That Prelude was my first “built” car. It comes from the UK and was in a really bad conditions. I have spend a lot of time on it, treating the rust, changing all the bushings for energy polyurethane one, the ball joints etc. I fitted it with Bilstein B8 suspension and eibach springs. It was quite an adventure to find them new as Bilstein discontinued it for the Prelude. I had also a lot of work on the engine. The car had 6 former owner, and wasn’t well treated. The one I bought it from, when I checked the oil, the stick was dry… Lucky me I came with an oil can, and as it was really cheap and after testing the rod bearings weren’t noisy, took it anyway. I had to change almost all the gasket and spi joints on it, cleaned the bay from all the oil, changed the timing belt, the worn glow plug wires and some other stuff on it.

It has been working fine for a Year, after all that work, spent a lot of time on track with it, and had a lot of fun. The chassis with the 4ws was awesome, the engine an H22A8 was really great with a good powerband, I was in front of my friends Clio III RS so that wasn’t bad. It was also good for every day use, with the 4ws to park it or in Frenchs narrow streets. I also really liked the sporty look it had.

But one day, in May 2015, while heading to the Nürburgring, the engine went down on the Autobahn. It was like 10km after the German border, tried to hit the top speed, but something felt wrong with the engine, I knew it wasn’t normal, I also knew for it’s past and was planning a full rebuild for next summer. But when I hit 230 km/h at about 7200 rpm, the engine was blown. It was a really F1 like with the big oil cloud, and the exhaust took fire, luckily, the front wheels didn’t lock up, and I stopped on the side, put the fire down whit the drivers side carpet and that was the end of my Lude. It was not worth finding a new engine as despite my work on the chassis, it was still rusty, and an RHD lude in France is worth nothing, and the engine impossible to find. So I took all the parts down, and scrapped it. First time I had tears in my eyes has the scrapyard took it away. I’m still missing it, it was unique, rare in my country, and had a wonderful feature, the 4WS.