Honda brought back one of its most storied names as a hybrid coupe, and the internet lost its mind. A week in the canyons says the truth is a lot more interesting.
Halfway up one of my favorite canyon roads, my right foot is flat on the floor and the blue coupe I’m driving is in no hurry to get to the top. Then the road kinks left, the front end bites, the steering tells me exactly what the tires are doing, and I’m grinning like an idiot. Then comes the straightaway, and I’m muttering “come on, come on” at the dashboard!
That, in two corners, is the 2026 Honda Prelude: one of the best-handling front-wheel-drive cars I’ve ever driven, attached to a powertrain that would rather be saving gas. And it’s the car internet commenters have spent the past year furiously typing about how much they hate.
There was a time when sport coupes ruled the road. Every manufacturer had at least one, and people actually bought them! Then crossovers and SUVs took over, and the coupes mostly disappeared. The Prelude went with them: the last one sold in the US was a 2001 model, and the name has sat on the shelf for 25 years.
So it’s a little bit wonderful that Honda decided to build a coupe again. The sixth-generation Prelude is built in Yorii, Japan, and based on the Civic, which is where the arguments start.
The good news is the chassis: the super sophisticated front suspension and steering from the Civic Type R, plus Brembo front brakes and adaptive dampers. The confusing part is under the hood. Most people expected the engine from a Civic Si or even the Type R, but Honda used the Civic Hybrid’s system instead: a 2.0-liter four-cylinder and two electric motors making 200 horsepower, with technically no conventional transmission. That’s a long way up from the first US Prelude’s 72 horsepower in 1979, but it’s moving 3,261 pounds.
Yes, I see the latest-gen Prius in the front end. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t scream sports car, and fans hoping for something retro were out of luck—Honda was clearly looking to the future.
It’s wider than you might expect, which should help the handling, and my test car wore black 19-inch wheels with Continental summer tires (a dealer-installed option). The rear is the nicest-looking part of the car, with Porsche Panamera vibes in the taillights and a cool script Prelude emblem. Maybe not beautiful, but certainly unique—and Preludes have always been a little bit different!
The Prelude is a lot easier to get in and out of than a Miata, and it feels surprisingly open inside. It’s basically a Civic interior with a nice lift: blue stitching, good materials and really comfortable seats. They’re manual only, though, with no lumbar support, which you might expect at over 40 grand. The infotainment isn’t fancy, but it has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
One of my favorite aspects of this car is that Honda still uses physical climate controls you can work without taking your eyes off the road—unlike all those terrible screen-based systems getting shoved down our throats! The low-res backup camera is a letdown, though, which is a bit of a problem with that big C-pillar blind spot.
Then there’s the back seat. Yes, the Prelude has one, though you’d never know it from the outside. At 6’3″, I’d need to be about two feet shorter to fit back there, and it’s even smaller than the one in my old Geo Storm, which is saying something!
The trunk is the opposite story: 15.1 cubic feet, enough to easily swallow four cases of beer for a party. Fold those pretty much useless rear seats down and the huge hatch opening might even take a bike.
Don’t expect EV-style shove off the line: 0–60 takes around seven seconds. By sporty-car standards that might seem laughably slow, but 0–60 times don’t matter as much as everybody thinks, and lately I’ve really been enjoying the whole slow-car-fast philosophy.
The Prelude fits it perfectly. The suspension is tuned softer than the Type R’s, but all that borrowed hardware adds up to an incredibly fantastic time. The steering is phenomenal, and on a deserted back road you’ll have the throttle mashed almost all the time, especially uphill. The handling almost makes up for the lack of speed. Maybe it really does!
Then there’s the big S+ button, which makes the Prelude pretend to have a dual-clutch transmission: “gears” on some really nice paddle shifters, rev-matched downshifts and enhanced engine sounds. Video game controls for your Prelude! It’s one very unique and slightly odd charade, and it actually makes the car a little slower, since each “shift” adds a small torque delay.
Back down on flat, boring roads, none of that matters, and the Prelude turns into an excellent commuter car with its adaptive suspension and lovely interior. At 44 mpg combined (EPA), nothing else like it comes close, so you’ll likely make back some of the price premium in gas savings.
There’s just one trim, at $43,195 with destination: about $10,000 more than a Civic Si and only about $5,000 shy of a Civic Type R. Some people see it as a Civic Hybrid with a $13,000 premium for sport suspension and a fancy interior. I don’t think that’s quite fair, but it does cost more than most cars you’d cross-shop it with—though it’s decently equipped, and the Mazda MX-5 RF Club costs almost exactly the same.
So who is it for? Maybe someone in their 50s or 60s who wants a fun, great-handling car but doesn’t want to drive a manual anymore. Roughly half of Miata hardtop buyers go with an automatic, so for a lot of people the lack of a manual may be a selling point, not a deal breaker.
No. It’s not as capable as a BRZ or a Miata, but it’s easier to live with: the Miata compromises on space for the driving experience, and the Prelude compromises on power for city driving. It’s really fun in the canyons and doesn’t punish you around town, and by going hybrid, Honda deliberately made something a bit weird that nobody else thought to try.
Personally, I’d want a manual, a few more horses and maybe a few grand off the price—but a manual lover like me probably isn’t the target customer. I think the real problem is that many people who wanted to be the Prelude’s customer, maybe for nostalgic reasons, were disappointed when Honda built a car that wasn’t for them. Some of the criticism is fair, but this is still a genuinely fun car. Will enough people buy the 4,000–5,000 a year Honda is hoping for? I guess we’ll find out!
2026 Honda Prelude, as tested
Watch the full review above, and check out my 2026 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF Club review too.
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