To deny it ... no. But argue it - yes!

Historically, oil consumption has -always- been feasible in auto motors, from the very very beginning. If you shot every car designer who allowed a design flaw through, we would have no cars. Can you name a perfect engine? Even Ferrari and Porsche engines, with their infinite design and precision and TLC have some issues. Some cars run hot due to narrow water jackets, some are fuel inefficient, some burn a little oil, some pollute more than others - it's a trade-off. Occasionally you'll find an engine like the one in your Jaguar (assuming it has no other problems), which is both exceptional and lucky.

With their invention of VTEC, Honda discovered one of the byproducts of changing valve timing is minimally increased oil consumption. It was minor enough that the average, unknowing driver wouldn't really notice it between changes, and VTEC-using drivers who push the cars tend to check fluids more often would top things off. I don't think Honda has a lax attitude - instead, I think they made a conscious choice to allow the performance-oriented Prelude to have maximum gain with a small trade-off. Lax would be if a non-VTEC engine burned oil routinely - because there is no solid engineering-based reason why that should happen. Ford has lax engineers - hence all the investigations in the Focus having collapsing suspensions, etc. Honda has always kept this pretty highly prioritized, from my understanding and experience.

So I wouldn't call this a design flaw ... 1) it was never reported as such, or complained about and 2) it's never been changed. My only criticism would lie in the fact they didn't publish this publically. But I suspect this was because the common driver associated any missing oil with "bad engine"... and wouldn't easily understand the need for this to occur with the valve extension and whatnot. The H22 is just like that. On the plus side, it's extremely efficient, gets great power-per-liter and torque, and lasts forever if decently maintained.

I agree, cars are investments... the Honda Prelude is listed as a blue chip investment in a complete list of such cars from 1930-2000 published by the editors of Consumer Guide. But just because it uses ~1 qt. of oil every 3k miles doesn't invalidate it's unique and very popular design... it's just part of that car's nature.