2026 Honda Prelude review: Australian first drive

You need to drive the Honda Prelude coupe. No, really. You need to drive the thing to understand what all the pre-launch hype has been about.

Honda's sell leans heavily on the nostalgic appeal of the previous five generations of Prelude, the last of which bowed out more than two decades ago. For many of us, a Prelude is a car that we remember from our youth and that promo tugs at the heart strings.

But if you're new to this whole Prelude thing, the proposition is quite simple. It's a coupe with top-drawer dynamics which doesn't have you in perpetual fear of losing your licence when you get it out on a good road. That is, sadly, a very rare breed of car.

It didn't used to be that way. Spool back the clock and you had a vast array of available coupes, admittedly some better to drive than others. This was the heartland occupied successfully by cars like the Toyota Celica, the Hyundai Coupe, the Holden Calibra, the Mazda MX-6, the Volvo C70 and the Peugeot 406 Coupe.

Since then we seem to have fallen out of love with a slinky two-door coupe, preferring instead to throw in our lot with the more suburban shape of the SUV. No judgment here, automotive tastes change and always have. But scan the new car market for affordable coupes and it's thin going.

We have the Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ twins as the prime exponents, the Mazda MX-5 RF (at a pinch) and then you're into vehicles like the BMW 2 Series. That's about your lot. I'm deliberately leaving aside chest-wig muscle cars like the Ford Mustang or the Nissan Z because they're a markedly different proposition.

Because it shares the majority of its drivetrain with the Civic hybrid, the Honda Prelude packs a modest 135kW and 315Nm. It ambles through 100km from standstill in 8.2 seconds, so you'd need to be pretty determined to see off a tradie in a Ford Ranger at the lights.

Does that sound like value for $65k drive-away? I can understand why you think it might not. But for the penny to drop regarding the Prelude's appeal, you need to do something very simple. Point it at a decent bit of road.

We had the opportunity to do exactly that at the recent local launch of the Prelude, held on the excellent roads of the Adelaide Hills.

Don't for a moment think that this is 'just' a Civic hybrid that's raided the dress-up box. The Prelude has some very different strings to its bow than the admittedly excellent Civic e:HEV.

You may well have read that it adopts the suspension and braking system of the Civic Type R. That's only partially true. The basic layout is similar but the detailed tuning of springs, dampers and bushings are all different. The brakes are all Brembo hardware up front, with Brembo-sourced pads used at the rear.

So by now you're probably building a picture of this rather rakish-looking liftback that has clearly had a stack of chassis-development love lavished upon it. Still, it might well stand accused of having a lot of mouth and a noticeable deficit in the trouser department. That would be a harsh assessment.

Push the drive button and roll away and the Prelude passes the fifty-metre test. The steering feels slick, the adaptive dampers feel agreeably expensive, and the throttle tip-in feels measured and well-calibrated.

There's a pleasant thrum from the 2.0-litre four-cylinder. You're not thinking too much about the clever dual-electric-motor system or how Honda's hybrid smarts can shape-shift from a pure EV to electric-motor assist, and then to almost exclusively engine propulsion at higher speeds. Because why would you bother? The more transparent these propulsive hand-passes are, the more seamless the drive.

Rumble out of Adelaide's eastern 'burbs and the hills rise abruptly. Game on.

Click the drive mode selector to Sport, and you feel the car tense like a flexed bicep. No, you don't get any more power (sorry) but the dampers firm up, the steering gets a welcome boost in weight and on-centre feel, and there's more noise fed through to the cabin.

The throttle map tightens and the 10.2-inch digital dial pack switches to an angry red, the power meter switching to a tacho. Now go further and deploy the Prelude's party piece.

The big S+ Shift button is hard to miss in the middle of the centre stack. Prod that and the paddles that previously controlled the amount of re-gen the Prelude harvested morph into gear shifters. Now you have a virtual 8-speed transmission to ping up and down.

It's not quite as revelatory as Hyundai's system on its Ioniq 5 N and 6 N models, as the Koreans wholesale changed the linear feel of an electric power delivery to the torque-shaped feel of an internal combustion engine coming 'on-cam' along with an abrupt rev limiter.

That said, S+ Shift features more convincing engine acoustics, some of it genuine, but the majority of it piped into the car using Active Sound Control (ASC). The bark of the throttle blips on downshifts are enough to paint a big grin on your face.

The adaptive damping system means that there's a real difference between the Prelude's three pre-set drive modes. Comfort is fairly self explanatory, GT is a bit firmer but still with decent compliance while Sport amps every one of the parameters up.

After a bit of experimenting, I found the sweet spot for the fairly lumpy roads in the Adelaide Hills. Click into Individual mode and set everything to GT apart from the steering which needs to be in Sport.

The steering is probably the least noteworthy aspect of the Honda Prelude's dynamics. It's perfectly acceptable for a modern electrically-assisted power steering system but even in Sport it doesn't quite deliver the detailed road feel that a car with this talents deserves. Mind you, the front end is seriously impressive in terms of grip. Even on some damp surfaces, it scribes a line cleanly, the Continental Premium Contact 6 tyres sniffing out grip impressively.

On some surfaces there's quite noticeable tyre roar and were I being ultra-picky, I'd have liked to have seen Comfort mode made more comfortable still. It's not harsh, but then it's not shy about reminding you of what this chassis is capable of.

There are no complaints about the punch of the brakes. Or the truly excellent body control. Nor, come to that, the traction deployment. Floor it out of a junction and there's not even a hint of axle tramp or torque steer.

It always feels agile, helped in no small part by a tare weight of 1449kg. That's light for a modern hybrid coupe. In fact, it's virtually lineball with a hot hatch like a Hyundai i30 N or a Volkswagen Golf GTI. Of course, you don't have the power of these two at your disposal, but the 315Nm of torque isn't too far off.

So it's a very solid report card on the dynamics front. In that regard at least, the Prelude is everything we'd hoped for and more.

How does it stand up that $65k asking price though?

First impressions in the cabin are good. Materials quality feels a level or two above the BRZ/GR86 twins, with a lovely monogrammed suede finish for the dash roll top, and the beautiful heated Honda body stabilising seats.

Unusually, the seats are asymmetric. The driver's seat is all deep bolstering to keep the body planted, while the passenger seat is a little wider, a little more comfortable and features shorter bolsters to make entry and egress easier.

The infotainment features wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, both of which held a rock-solid connection, and a mobile phone charger. If you're through with pairing a handset, don't worry, the Prelude has you covered. Download your favourite apps to the Google Built-in system and the onboard cellular connection means it can all function even if you've left your phone on the charger at home. Neat.

There's also a second-generation version of Honda Connect as standard, where you can use your phone as a key, receive over the updates and access remote functions such as checking fuel level, turning lights on and off or remotely immobilise the vehicle.

The headlights merit special mention, high intensity adaptive LED units with a neat cornering lighting function. Between two and 40km/h, it actually senses that you're indicating to turn and will flood the area with light to allow you to see the kerbs and around the corner.

The infotainment system is good, with a brisk processor and a 9.0-inch touch screen that sits atop the dashboard. Yes, it'll look a little malnourished if you've just jumped out of a Tesla, but it does a decent job and feeds a Bose eight-speaker stereo system. Audio quality is acceptable without being standout.

With a full electrically-operated lift back, the Prelude offers a welcome measure of practicality, even if rear seat leg and headroom is meagre. The rear seats can fold almost flat to give a long luggage bay that looks as if it would be a pretty snug place to get your head down for forty winks.

The boot measures 264 litres with the rear seats in place, 663 litres when the seats are folded and loaded to the window line, and an impressive 760 litres when loaded to the roof.

I'm not sure what you make of the styling. I felt it was a little gawky when I first saw press pictures of it, with a windscreen that looked too upright compared to the swept tail. The more I look at it, the better it looks though. It certainly looks distinctive and there's definitely something Porsche 911 about the contoured full-width light bar.

The Honda Prelude available in just five colours. The hero colour is Moonlit White Pearl, but if that's not your hue, there's also Meteoroid Grey metallic, Crystal Black pearl, Rallye Red and the very striking Racing Blue Pearl. All are complemented by black 19-inch alloy wheels that frame blue-finished Brembo brake calipers. The best part? None of the paint finishes carry a premium price tag.

You can buy a couple of option packs if you're so tempted. The Style Pack will run you $2505 in total, or you can purchase each of the elements separately. These comprise an illuminated door sill set ($650), a front spoiler ($990), a boot spoiler ($990) and a carpet mat set ($250).

Safety? Well, there's a stack of gear including 10 airbags, adaptive cruise, lane-keep assist, traffic sign recognition, rear cross traffic alert and an intelligent speed limiter. The one significant caveat we'd highlight is that the model has yet to be independently crash-tested by ANCAP.

The Prelude is built on a similar platform and uses some shared safety systems with the Civic hybrid, which earned a 5-star ANCAP safety rating in 2022.

Honda even makes it easy to own, with that no-haggle asking price, a five-year unlimited-kilometre warranty, and $199-per-annum capped-price servicing. Keep that service record going (and why wouldn't you) at a Honda main dealer and you can extend the warranty for another three years, with another three years' roadside assist also bundled in.

Couple that with the fact that the Honda Prelude is quite happy drinking basic 91 RON fuel and no matter what sort of furious driving we inflicted on it, the car never wanted to consume much more than 8.5L/100km. The official figure with a more measured right clog is a distinctly virtuous 4.3L/100km.

So here we have a good looking, well-equipped, well-built, sensibly priced coupe that's fun to drive and won't break the bank to own. It sounds like a blueprint for success.

Not so fast.

To buy into the Prelude's blend of qualities requires a cerebral sort of buyer who knows that a big power figure isn't the be all and end all. It requires somebody willing to do their homework to realise that the $65k asking price is, if anything, a bit of a bargain.

Honda tried once before to appeal to that sliver of the market with its 2010 CR-Z hybrid coupe, and ended up with a car that seemed glued to showroom floors. It now believes that buyer sentiment has come round to cars such as these.

Time will tell. It's possible that the Prelude will remain a relatively rare sight on Aussie roads. If that proved the case, it'd be a huge pity. Honda has built a car for the thinking enthusiast. I'd love to see it rewarded for taking the risk and doing so.

If you're undecided about the Prelude, just drive it. It's a little gem.

Andy brings almost 30 years of automotive writing experience to his role at Drive. When he wasn’t showing people which way the Nürburgring went, he freelanced for outlets such as Car, Autocar, and The Times. After contributing to Top Gear Australia, Andy subsequently moved Down Under, serving as editor at MOTOR and Wheels. As Drive’s Road Test Editor, he’s at the heart of our vehicle testing, but also loves to spin a long-form yarn. Winner of the Newspress award for Best Feature Writer in 2025, Andy's powering up Drive's feature section too. He's still the only person he knows who failed a McDonald’s job interview as a teen. That demonstrates something, but we're not quite sure what.

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