Styling
First of all, I think the new Prelude Mk6 looks fabulous. In its swoopy form, it's actually reminiscent of my fourth-gen car remastered, rather than the more angular other iterations of the Honda coupe, but this is not simply some kind of very belated confirmation bias on my part, an attempt to big-up the Mk4 over all other versions. During my week behind the wheel of the latest version, it was clear the rakish looks of the Prelude were a major draw, if plenty of gawping bystanders is any rationale.
Helps, of course, that the PR team clothed the car in the sumptuous Racing Blue Pearl paint (£700), but I was always someone who preferred a Prelude to have a discreet rear spoiler. My '91 example was a Bordeaux Red Si with the tasteful factory item equipped, but the interesting thing about RJ75 ZZN is that, since taking the press photos of the car which have been used in this article, the decision has subsequently been made to fit the Prelude with the £600 tailgate spoiler. I reckon it just balances off the shape perfectly, so from the kerbside the Honda constitutes a huge hit. Even with its 19-inch alloy wheels finished in black.
Interior
A light-and-shade colour combo, the full-width dash redolent of the older models (but not entirely LCD digital, as with the fourth-gen), and Honda's usual excellent build quality and ergonomic correctness add up to a cabin which can be deemed a success. Yet I reserve my most effusive praise for those seats. They're epic. All squidgy and comfortable, but beautifully shaped and thoroughly supportive, it might sound like I'm copywriting an ad for some kind of highly specialised article of clothing (no comment), but I'm not. I'm trying to describe some of the best bucket seats in the game. Maybe better even than the classy items in the
FL5 CTR; that's how good the coupe's front chairs are.
OK, so the Prelude's nine-inch infotainment screen is a bit cacky by modern standards, while the cluster looks like it was lifted wholesale from an
eleventh-gen Civic, save for some token model-specific graphics. But the former's deficiencies can be bypassed by either Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, while the latter at least displays all its vital information clearly and concisely, and furthermore the Honda coupe has a proper, physical set of climate controls. Throw in that lovely little 'Prelude' emblem on the passenger-side dash and I'll happily admit it - I'm completely smitten.
Practicality
OK, calling the Honda Prelude a four-seater is probably pushing it, but those rear pews kind of look semi-usable, although the long slope of the tailgate means headroom is going to be limited for anyone above average height. Better yet, the bench's backrests split-fold in a 50:50 ratio, so you can drop them down and enlarge the OK-ish standard boot from its 264 litres to a much handier 760 litres.
Performance
Sorry to keep banging on about it, but as a grey import my old Mk4 Prelude (now a 35-year-old car, remember) had the H22A 2.2-litre four-cylinder VTEC in a slightly higher state of tune than the UK cars, so it delivered 197hp rather than 185hp. The later fifth-gen, which I always thought looked gawky after the slippery Mk4, but which is a shape I'll admit has aged marvellously since, even got up to 220hp in its last-of-the-line variants - before the original Prelude line died out in 2001.
Of course, the big news for the new one is that it's now a hybrid. It essentially uses the i-MMD 2.0-litre powertrain from the Civic Mk11, and somewhere deep in the Atkinson cycle fuel-saving tomfoolery there's still VTEC, of a sort. But the e:HEV delivers moderate overall system outputs of 184hp and 315Nm. The latter figure is maybe a useful increase on the older cars. The former, though, as you can see, hasn't moved the performance game on. At all.
It also looks reedy in a post-turbocharged hot-hatch age, when we're getting swamped by affordable EV performance five-doors that can churn out a lot more than 184hp, and possibly also eclipse 315Nm. Thankfully, though, as the Honda weighs less than 1.5 tonnes in this trim, the car is fairly spry. The 0-62mph time is 8.2 seconds on paper, and in practice the coupe feels every bit capable of that sort of pace, and maybe subjectively comes across as being even quicker still.
One of the noble conceits it performs, despite having a CVT, is to mimic gearshifts. It does this party trick (christened 'S+ Shift') quite well and when you're stoking the Prelude along some interesting backroads, it's nice to have this enthusiast-satisfying trait as part of the package. It does help the Honda put on a convincing air of being a proper performance car, while I'd even go so far as to say the four-cylinder soundtrack is, contrary to pre-drive expectations, pretty appealing.
I've no complaints about that CVT, then, as it never really behaves like an old-fashioned CVT (thank the lord), and because the entire machine is relatively light then the brakes of the Prelude are also always up to the task. So no, I don't reckon any memes are about to surface of someone shouting 'e:HEV just kicked in, yo!', but this Honda definitely hasn't been ruined by the adoption of a hybrid powertrain.
Yett you're surely going to benefit at the pumps. After 252 miles in my care, on a variety of roads and including a long drive back to near Honda's UK base to drive the fabulous
Super-N, the Prelude was showing an overall consumption rate of 50.2mpg, which is highly commendable indeed.
Ride & Handling
Honda learned from the sterling work it put into developing the astounding FL5 Civic Type-R and adopted some of those set-up tricks for the chassis of the Prelude. Basically, what I'm saying here is that the Mk6 is not just an eleventh-gen Civic in a fancy frock. It might have the same frugal, modest powertrain as Honda's family hatchback, but it has been tuned to be much more engaging in the corners.
The great news, for Prelude fans like me, is this has worked like a dream. Please don't misconstrue me, it's nothing like as intense and raw as one of the company's fabled red-badged products, such as the mesmeric
DC2 Integra Type R. But the gorgeous, fluid way the Prelude flows along a twisting road is an unalloyed joy, while as the driver you revel in the superb steering and spot-on body control (not too firm, not too softly sprung), and just keep pushing to the limits of the Honda's handling envelope that little bit more. It's exactly like I remember Preludes driving back in the day. It's pure dynamic nostalgia, in all honesty.
And because it is not some hardcore monster on diamond-hard springs and intransigent dampers, and it doesn't needlessly sit on a set of 21s for the purposes of showroom clout, the Prelude is also a phenomenally assured cruiser. Its high-speed comfort levels and nigh-on impeccable rolling refinement are a true testament to the brilliant work of Honda's revered engineers.
The Prelude e:HEV is not endlessly invigorating to drive nor some seminal moment in chassis calibration. But as a sweet, ultra-accessible, everyday performance coupe that's powerful enough to feel rapid but not so stupidly potent that having a blast in it will see you deep into three-figure speeds, it's hard to come to any alternative conclusion about the way the Honda drives, other than the company has completely obliterated its intended targets for the manner the Prelude gets down the road. It's quite simply a spectacularly well-judged car across the board.
Value
One of the potential stumbling blocks to the Prelude's success here in the UK, aside from the fact Honda only has an allocation of 500 units per year for the car so it won't be that easy to get hold of even if you do succumb to its undeniable charm, is that it's as near as makes no difference a 42-grand machine nowadays. And yes, all the kit on the test car sent to me is standard-fit, including the rich eight-speaker Bose sound system (another highlight of the coupe), but chuck on a nice paint, that essential (yes, I said essential) boot spoiler and the white illuminated door sills, and you've added another £1,745 to the tally and gone beyond £43,250. Is the Prelude worth such a chunk of money, when it falls foul of the £40,000 expensive car supplement part of VED and, for all its worthiness and likeability, it's not much different to the previous five generations, which ultimately shuffled off this automotive mortal coil a quarter of a century ago?
Verdict
I almost don't know what to write here. I don't understand what happened in the planning meeting whereby someone (an absolute legend, mark you, but still) deep in the bowels of Honda suddenly said, out of the blue, 'let's revive the Prelude and let's make it almost exactly like it was at the turn of the millennium'. If the company is trying to attract a younger audience with a car like this, I suspect it has made a fatal error. Seriously, the only people who are going to be delighted by the Prelude's return are former owners, like me, and with the best will in the world they're all going to be well into their forties by now, maybe beyond 50.
Whatever the bizarre justification for bringing it back, that still doesn't alter the dichotomy this machine has placed me in as a critic. This is possibly one of the nicest, most cohesive cars I've driven in recent years, and that's a huge, most welcome surprise. But it's almost as if someone has resurrected one of your long-dead relatives through arcane black magic. On the one hand, you're ecstatic that they're back in your life, but you're also creeped out by the fact that they look and act the same as they did way back when, instead of having aged and lived a full life in the interim.
My heart, therefore, wants to give this thing five stars out of five. It's a thoroughly authentic continuation of the Prelude DNA, only lightly refreshed for the 2020s with hybrid power and more advanced onboard tech. In terms of the sharp, crisp and clean way it steers, though, it feels so much like the old ancestors in so many ways that you could practically blindfold a former owner (me again!) and they'd know instantly what they were at the wheel of, without being told it was a Prelude.
But... why? Why has it come back? And why is it so expensive? And who's going to buy it? Isn't this one of the
worst possible body formats to resuscitate in a period where everyone wants a high-powered electric SUV of some sort? That's where my critical head says this is a three-star vehicle, at best. So in the end, my personal and professional sides have compromised and given the Honda Prelude e:HEV four out of five. It's utterly bemusing, it's utterly barmy... and it's utterly beguiling, too. I love it. Absolutely love it.
