Honda Prelude review

The Honda engineers deployed numerous graphs to explain why 181bhp really is enough for the Prelude to be getting on with, a response to the inevitable social media takedown when the car was first announced. And while enthusiasts like us know that a 0-62mph time never wholly defines a performance car, eight-point-odd seconds is a hard sell to anyone.

But this is a clever and ultimately very refined powertrain, with Honda’s finely detailed focus on weight clearly wringing out as much rapidity as possible from a setup intrinsically designed for efficiency. And hey, 117g/km of CO2 and 54.3mpg feel incongruously good in something that looks as slick as this.

So. Is it fun?

Yes. The car feels spectacularly over-chassised in your early miles, its winning repertoire of grip, balance and precision clearly able to handle a lot more performance than it’s being served.

The Prelude makes the very best of the components it’s been given and is a joy to keep pushing harder and harder on a good piece of road, all the while knowing it’ll settle right back down to an easygoing cruise once your adrenaline is spent. Its grip is carefully spread across all four corners, with no tyre squeal or errant wheelspin, while its brake pedal (with a bespoke Brembo system at the end of it) is strong and trustworthy.

No single element of the car truly dazzles, but together they all form a cohesive whole that you can tell real handling nerds have poured their heart and soul into. And you don’t actually feel its various systems – such as the nipped braking of AHA – at work, proof that they’re woven well into the overall experience.

And what of those fake gears?

S+ became our default while driving the car, whether leaving it to shuffle ‘gears’ itself in the background like an automatic or grabbing the paddles and getting stuck in ourselves. With eight ‘ratios’ across a modest 117mph spread (yup, that's its top speed...), the ratios are short – ‘second’, ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ will be your back road go-tos. Let’s stop with the inverted commas now.

Here’s the thing though… the gears don’t affect performance in any way. Plant your foot in first or eighth and the acceleration you get is exactly the same – but their effect on your engagement is genuine. You’re only really matching the engine note to your level of commitment, making the Prelude half car, half violin. Which might sound like a gimmick, but is that not a massively better solution than letting the CVT scream like a hive of angry bees?

Curiously, manual mode only lasts for a few seconds, and it’s here that Honda’s left itself room for improvement – let us choose when the fun’s over, don’t leave it up to the software. Please and thank you.

Are there drive modes?

But of course. There are seven levels of brake regen, only operable when you’re not using S+, and rather than let the car default to the middlemost one you can pick your favourite by pulling the left paddle for two seconds. The highest setting is rather strong indeed, but not quite one-pedal driving.

There’s also overarching Comfort, GT and Sport setups which play with the powertrain, steering, adaptive damping, engine sound and the digital instrument display, with a pick ‘n’ mix Individual mode. The car defaults into GT on start up and is nice enough left that way. Even with everything ramped up, this never feels anything but a precisely honed FWD car, never elevating above its station like a fully lit Integra Type R used to.

Soften off the ride and the suspension’s still rather jiggly on UK roads, with a fair amount of noise and harshness filtering into the cabin. In its current form we don’t see the Prelude as a GT car – the suspension setup makes the most sense when you’re on the front foot, so to speak.

If that’s the case, is 181bhp enough?

There’s enough power to build a satisfying flow on a favourite road (and the augmented engine note is high-pitched and suitably tuneful) but not quite enough to execute strident overtakes of any dawdling traffic that’s stifling your fun. The Prelude is just quick enough, but rarely more.

What’s confusing is how it accelerates: that initial, optimistic hit from the electric motor tails off just as the engine builds to something substantial… because as discussed, the engine’s not supplying the thrust here. It’ll take a while to get your head around that.

Much of the excitement – and sensation of speed – comes from the sound and shifts, suggesting S+ is less of a gimmick and more of a necessity to distance itself from a Civic or ZR-V. Fine by us, really.

All that hybrid tinkering is for CO2… so is fuel economy any good?

Good point. 54.3mpg is the official claim and TG’s test car had averaged more than 50mpg over several hundred miles before we got in. Spend time hooning up and down your favourite quiet road and you’ll halve that, but in regular use we don’t see why you wouldn’t get close to the lab number. You’ll fare better here than in a 2 Series Coupe, at least.