The 2026 Honda Prelude is NOT slow, just misunderstood.

[pillred4]

This might upset some purists and garner me some hate, and I'm not claiming the Prelude is some performance monster, but... I’ve seen a lot of social media chatter and reviews writing the Prelude off as a slow eco-civic-coupe because of the 184hp figure (or the false 200hp), assuming it can't even begin to compare with cars like the Civic Type R.

Obviously, if you put both cars on a straight at Silverstone, the Civic's much more powerful engine will absolutely obliterate the Prelude. But what about a tight autocross track or a winding country lane? Speeds are physically capped around 60-70mph max, and you are constantly doing heavy braking down to ~20mph for tight hairpins. Under such conditions, the Prelude might just surprise you with how well it keeps up with the Civic.

Coming out of a harsh 20mph hairpin, the Civic driver in 2nd gear floors it, there's a physical delay. They have to wait for the exhaust gases to spool up their turbocharger and build RPM before the real power hits. In the Prelude almost all of its power is available immediately. There is no turbo to spool. The electric motor dumps its maximum torque into the wheels and by the time the Civic's turbo has finally woken up, the Prelude may have already leaped a car length ahead.

Then there is the case of the gears. On a slower track, a manual Type R is constantly caught in the awkward zone rowing up and down between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gear. Every time you have to shift up to 3rd for a quick burst, and then downshift back into 2nd for the next bend, power delivery pauses, boost drops. Meanwhile, because the Prelude's engine isn't mechanically linked to the wheels under hard acceleration, there are zero mechanical gear shifts. There's just one continuous, uninterrupted wave of electric torque. You can focus 100% of your brain capacity on your braking points rather than gear selection.

Though of course, physics is still physics. The Type R will still stay ahead even outside of the power difference, it has stiffer suspension, a fancy LSD, and weighs less than the Prelude.

So, I think we should stop looking at the 184/200hp figure in a vacuum. In a straight line to 150mph, the Prelude will get stomped by your nan's hatchback. But between 0 and 60mph on tight roads, the Prelude's instant electric torque and uninterrupted power delivery make it seriously capable. And maybe it's just a coincidence, but outside of the motorway and city most roads you end up driving on in the real world happen to be exactly in that windy sub-70mph category...

I have had many hot hatches, including an I30N, when I test drove the Prelude I was amazed how fast it felt, and yes in the real world the Prelude is a pretty quick car, I watched a vid on YouTube where they raced a Type R and a prelude over the 8th and quarter mile, yes the Type R beat the Prelude over the quarter but in the 8th they were almost a dead heat and the Prelude was actually ahead for the first 200 yards, so yes in day to day driving the Prelude can hold it's own with most cars, and surprise quite a few too.

 

[pillred4]

You're right. The Prelude is an astonishing feat of engineering, and makes most of the cars that people get nostalgic about look decidedly 'last millenium'. All we need now is a battery pack with the same energy density as a tank of petrol...

I'm sick of seeing lightweight and uninformed reviews of the Prelude saying it needs 350+hp, manual transmission, four wheel drive, etc - and be $10k cheaper too. "My Ford truck makes more power than that". Fine - so drive your Ford truck. It'll free up a Prelude for someone who'll actually appreciate its capabilities...

I have basically given up on reading N American YouTube reviews as they are nearly all negative, though there are a few notable exceptions.

 

[pillred4]

I could go for a little more soundproofing and maybe a sunroof to be honest...

It would have been nice for a panoramic roof, but I can count on the fingers of one hand when on a drive in my current car I have had the sunroof open, as once over 30mph it becomes too noisy.

 

[pillred4]

Yeah, those fogged up nostalgia goggles seem to be creating a lot of unnecessary hate towards the new Prelude. My mom had a Gen 4 Prelude (non-VTEC with amazing pickup) that I drove a lot when we would take road trips, and I had a Gen 5 VTEC for 12 years, and they were both great cars that were fun to drive, but they were NOT sports cars as some people want to remember them as! They both had the same horsepower as the new one, but the new one corners SO much better than either the Gen 4 or Gen 5, and my first roadtrip into a lightly mountainous area with some winding roads was actually more fun than it would have been in my Gen 5! The steering on the Gen 6 is fabulous and not having to upshift and downshift around the corners on a mountain road made it possible for me to enjoy the drive more.

I would absolutely test drive and consider purchasing a newer Prelude that had more horsepower and a MT (I definitely do sometimes miss driving a stick after driving a hybrid sedan for 10 years between my Preludes, and was extremely disappointed when I found out the new Prelude would be a hybrid not a MT), but this 2026 Prelude is so much fun to drive, is great looking, and gets me anywhere from 42-51mpg as opposed to the ~25mpg that my Gen 5 got!

I think some of the people who made loads of mods to their Preludes, or who had one years ago, aren’t really remembering them accurately. I think it is hysterical that some of them claim that if it doesn’t have a MT, it isn’t a Prelude, yet there are a surprising number of old Preludes with an AT for sale… and none of these “it’s not a Prelude without a stick” folks say a word about a Gen 4 automatic!

I have to ask, what the hell is that a picture of in your avatar?