Honda Prelude: Back with a battery

What is it?

The Honda Prelude is back after a 25-year sabbatical and this time it has returned as a hybrid sports coupe. 

Prelude started in 1978 as a modest but sexy coupé closely related to the cheeky Civic and posh Accord, before becoming one of Honda’s technological flagwavers over five generations. 

World-first mechanical four-wheel steering and high-revving VTEC engines helped make it much more than a sporty car. 

It was Honda showing what it could do and while the new sixth generation car isn’t quite as groundbreaking – it has some clever tricks of its own.

The sleek fastback swaps pure dinosaur for a 135kW hybrid drivetrain, adds Civic Type R suspension and brake bits, adaptive suspension and a spot of fake gear shifting — to keep enthusiasts titillated. 

The alchemy works like a love potion because this isn’t a car that needs huge power to entertain. 

Prelude has always been more about handling than brute force and the new one sticks with that formula while adding the fuel-saving benefits of hybrid power.

Sixth generation Prelude is a visual cornucopia, with a low bonnet, slim adaptive headlights and a complex rear that draws the eye across its handsome rump. 

The proportions are excellent and the huge rear hatch makes it considerably more useful than a conventional coupe, although that gorgeous glass forming part of the arched roofline eats into rear headroom. 

Legroom isn’t exactly generous either, so the back seats are best regarded as somewhere to put people you don’t like very much. 

The long doors get those fashionably difficult pull-out handles that have spread through the industry, although Honda at least lets you lever them out manually when things go pear-shaped.

Inside, Honda has resisted the temptation to turn the dashboard into a cinema. 

The 9.0-inch infotainment screen looks small beside the giant displays now abundant in showrooms, but the upside is physical buttons and simple menus rather than hiding everything behind layers of touchscreen nonsense. 

The 10.25-inch driver display and crystal-clear head-up display handle the important information, although at $65,000 driveaway we would have hoped for bigger screens. 

The seats are manually adjusted, which is a bit rich for $65K, while the materials create a sense of cosseting class and the embroidered Prelude script on the dash brings back childhood memories.

What’s it cost?

Honda Prelude is $65,000 driveaway, which is a whole heapin’ helpin’ of shekels for a car with shift’em ya’self seats. 

Chinese brands are offering powered seats and plenty of electronic flunkies for around $20,000 less, so there is no pretending the Prelude is some bargain basement special. 

The price has to be judged against what the car actually is, rather than simply counting screens and electric motors.

That comparison becomes rather more interesting when you try to find something similar. 

Don’t bother looking for another hybrid two-door sports car under $70,000 because there isn’t one. 

A Mazda MX-5 comes closer in spirit and costs less, but it offers a very different experience.

The MX-5 delivers more of a council chav joyride while the Prelude has the cravatted panache of Simon Templar. 

You can argue about which one you prefer, but they aren’t really substitutes for each other.

That leaves Prelude in a rather unusual position.

Honda isn’t asking buyers to choose between several versions of the same thing, and there isn’t a direct rival waiting around the corner with a cheaper price and more equipment. 

The car is expensive, but its uniqueness gives Honda at least some justification for the asking money.

What’s it go like?

Prelude has never been a muscled brute elbowing its way through traffic like a steroidal yob. 

It was always refined, elegant and modestly powered, and the new one continues that tradition with 135kW and 315Nm driving the front wheels. 

The hybrid system uses an electric motor to drive the wheels, while the petrol engine primarily acts as a generator, occasionally manacled to the front wheels at speed. 

In simple terms, it is an electric-first strategy that uses petrol when it has to.

Honda quotes 4.3L/100km combined, but our test week returned 5.5L/100km, which is 28 per cent more than the official figure. 

Naughty, wicked little Honda, you saucy minx, you. 

Toyota’s hybrids generally land much closer to their claims, but Toyota. I’m asleep already. 

The Prelude’s result is still respectable for a sporty coupe, particularly when you consider that the car is clearly designed to entertain rather than simply sit in a queue of traffic extracting the last possible drop of fuel.

The interesting stuff is the chassis. Honda has borrowed suspension bits and brake parts from the Civic Type R, added adaptive suspension and then thrown in S+ Shift which creates a vroom-vroom noise and simulated gear changes.

If that sounds like bollocks, it isn’t. It is part of what makes Prelude special, because the fake gears give the driver something to play with while the chassis does what it does best.

Cornering is an absolute delight, the car switches direction physically and in S+ mode the paddle shifters whack those fake gears about the place like a ping-pong ball on coke.

The feature can also drive you into a fruity lather, which is something usually reserved for the French, so it’s an amusing thing to find in a Japanese car. 

S+ actually makes the 0-100km/h time slower, moving it from 7.2 seconds to 8.2 seconds, which sounds like a joke until you realise that outright acceleration isn’t the point. 

Leave it to its own devices and enjoy the view. Is 7.2 seconds slow? 

No, it’s unrushed, and that suits the Prelude far better than some attempt to turn it into a straight-line hero.

Everything is easy to use apart from the Google Assistant, which behaves like a Gen Alpha work experience junior when you ask it to do something. 

We weren’t able to properly sign in, and although a driver account had been created, the system seemed much happier dealing with owners than humble, ham-fisted reviewers.

 

What we like?

• Civic Type R suspension and brake components give Prelude a terrific chassis, and the car is a delight when the road gets twisty. 
• It looks expensive because it is, but unlike some cars wearing expensive-looking bodywork, the shape has a purpose and plenty of visual interest
• Our 5.5L/100km test result is respectable and provides the efficiency Honda needs without turning the car into an appliance
• The fake gears sound ridiculous until you try them, adding some theatre and giving the driver another way to interact with the car
• Its uniqueness. This is the big one. Find another hybrid 2-door sports car under $70,000. There isn’t one, which gives Prelude a niche almost entirely of its own

What we don’t like?

• $65,000 is a lot for a Honda, especially when cheaper Chinese cars offer more equipment and powered seats
• Talking about the seats. At this price, having to shift’em ya’self feels stingy. Honda could have done better here
• The rear glass limits headroom and the wheelbase limits legroom. Prelude is really a cosy love hutch for 2, with the back seats are better suited to occasional use than long journeys
• The infotainment system was moody and difficult to sign into, behaving more like an inexperienced work experience junior than the clever electronic assistant Honda presumably intended

The bottom line?

Prelude is a difficult car to assess using the normal rules because there isn’t a direct competitor waiting to be dragged into the comparison.

It isn’t the fastest sports car for $65,000, it isn’t the cheapest hybrid and it certainly isn’t the most generously equipped car at the price. 

What it is, however, is a hybrid two-door sports coupe with Type R chassis hardware, excellent handling, a huge hatch and enough personality to make the whole thing worthwhile.

That uniqueness is probably what saves it. Japanese car makers are losing market share up hill and down dale, and they can’t compete with Chinese brands on price or technology any more — so filling a niche is about the only haven left. 

Prelude may have found just such a niche because there is no cheap Chinese pretender waiting to undercut it with another hybrid coupe. 

The Prelude is a reminder that sports cars don’t need to be stupidly powerful to be entertaining. 

There is, of course, the bigger issue of fuel itself.

The world is running out of time to banish the burning of Carboniferous dross, and if we keep treating the planet like we have a spare, whether a car has cooled seats will eventually become the mootest of matters. 

Prelude’s hybrid system isn’t a full answer to that problem, but it is a sensible way of making a sports coupe considerably less thirsty without taking away the reason you’d want to drive it.

Honda has done something far more interesting than simply producing another SUV or another anonymous family car. 

It has brought back Prelude and given it a modern interpretation that retains the old car’s basic personality. 

It looks gorgeous, handles beautifully and does something almost nobody else is doing. 

After 25 years away, that’s a pretty good reason to welcome it back.

 

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