Honda Prelude Review 2025

After 25 years the Honda Prelude is back. Taking parts from the Honda Civic hybrid, mixing them with Civic Type R bits and pieces before packaging them into an attractive coupe body — does the driving experience live up to the looks? Find out in our full Honda Prelude review.

Bringing back the names of long-dead coupes is nothing new, but when it's happened recently, it's tended to prove unsavoury as far as fans of the originals are concerned. There was the Ford Puma, returning not as a cheap and entertaining coupe but as a compact SUV. Then there's the Ford Capri, which is now an electric SUV that's more Volkswagen than Ford. And the less said the better about the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.

Going by the unwritten rules of the modern car industry, the brand new Honda Prelude — the first model to be so called in 25 years — should be a small SUV. But it isn't. It's a proper coupe — and an arguably very handsome one at that. Oh and it's not even electric. 

Well, not fully. Something had to give and it's under the bonnet. As fun as it might have been to have slung the 329PS engine from the most recent — and now off sale — Honda Civic Type R in there, the Prelude has a hybrid setup shared with the standard Civic, making 203PS. That doesn't sound like much and, these days, it really isn't. 

The Honda Prelude makes up for that with an instantly available 315Nm of torque and fantastic handling credentials courtesy of those Type R parts, which have a softer, more comfortable setting here. It's a really fun car to drive fast and on particularly twisty roads, we reckon you won't be wanting extra performance. But on a more open road? Well, you might find it a bit sluggish for something that looks the way it does.

Honda has to its credit worked hard to inject some extra fun and involvement into the hybrid package. Normally, it has a CVT-like, elastic response to accelerator inputs, although technically, it doesn't have a gearbox at all. Here in the Prelude, it's engineered to rev and shift between ratios like a conventional automatic. For the most part, this works very well. 

The setup should prove economical and once you factor in a decent amount of practicality for a coupe, the Prelude will be a very easy sports car to live with. So long as you won't be transporting anyone other than kids in the back because rear headroom is poor. 

A price of £40,995 puts the Honda Prelude in the same area as the BMW 220i M Sport Coupe with a few options added — the entry-level BMW 2 Series Coupe is the Honda's only clear competition, with the bulk of the coupe market now focused on far fancier, more expensive offerings.

We're struggling to picture anyone picking between the two, though, because they're very different propositions. Given that the Prelude isn't much more than a top-spec Civic, perhaps there's a rationale for potential buyers of the latter to upgrade to the former if five-door practicality isn't essential. 

In truth, we're not sure who the Honda Prelude is aimed at. Gen Xers in America are loving it, with demand outstripping supply but time will tell if it's the same case for the UK. It doesn't need to be massively popular as Honda only plans to sell 400 coming here in its first year on sale and 500 in the second. 

They'll remain a rare sight on our roads then, but whenever you do spot one it'll surely make you smile in a way a Honda Prelude-badged SUV wouldn't have.

Thankfully, the Honda Prelude isn't merely a Civic in a fancy new frock. For one thing, its wheelbase is shorter, which brings with it a greater sense of agility. It also gets all sorts of suspension parts from the Civic Type R.

These include a dual-axis strut front suspension setup, intended to separate damping and steering forces, reducing the sensation of the steering being pulled under heavy acceleration — known as torque steer — and stopping the front from pushing wide in corners. The Prelude also has the same adaptive dampers as the Type R but with a softer setup, plus the distance between the wheels side-to-side is wider than the standard Civic. 

Honda says the stiffness of the Prelude is somewhere between the regular Civic and the Type R, but we reckon it's a smidge closer to the latter. The Type R is one of the firmest-riding cars we've ever driven, to the point where its sportier suspension modes are unusable on many UK roads, yet there's noticeably more give in the Prelude's setup when going over lumps and bumps in the asphalt.

There's even a bit of body roll but it's far from excessive, ensuring the Honda always feels controlled when you're cornering quickly. Though comfortable on the whole, the Prelude does occasionally remind you that it is still on the firmer side of things, with the odd jolt coming through the suspension, particularly if you go a bit too quickly over a speed bump or pothole. 

The Prelude laps up fast changes in direction when in tighter corners and feels very stable through faster bends. The steering has a well-weighted, natural feeling to it, helping make the most of that great handling. 

There's only one propulsion option available for the Honda Prelude, which is the hybrid engine taken from the related Civic hatchback.

It's a complicated setup in which a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder engine is employed to spend a lot of its time merely charging the 1kWh battery pack, which in turn feeds a powerful electric motor which drives the front wheels. Yett it can also directly drive the front wheels via a motor generator. 

The total system power is 203PS, which is less than the quickest versions of the last Honda Prelude made a quarter of a century ago. As a consequence, the 0-62mph time of 8.2 seconds isn't what you'd call impressive for something billed as a sports coupe. Even the entry-level version of the BMW 2 Series Coupe is quicker. 

On a twisty enough road, though, you mostly aren't left wanting for more performance. A big part of that is the 315Nm of torque, which the electric motor is able to deliver instantly, making the Prelude feel very responsive.

Also, although there's technically not a gearbox at all in this unusual hybrid system, Honda has engineered eight simulated ratios, in theory making for a more satisfying driving experience than the elastic, CVT-like engine responses in the Civic. 

To make the most out of this you engage the S+ Shift mode via a dedicated button on the centre console. Once selected it's remarkably effective, doing a brilliant — at times uncanny — replication of a proper gearbox. There are moments, particularly under downshifts, when it's less convincing, but it's very impressive on the whole. It's a shame, then, that the system insists on downshifting for you on anything over about two-thirds throttle. There's no true, fully manual mode. 

You also start to find the limitations of the hybrid system after particularly hard use and a lot of uphill driving, for instance, on a twisty mountain pass. If the battery charge gets low enough, there's a noticeable drop-off in performance. On typical British country roads you're less likely to run into this problem, but on more open, flowing routes, you might still find the full output to be a bit lacking. The Prelude simply looks like it should be quicker than it is. 

The noise from the engine is nothing particularly spectacular but it's not unpleasant either, plus it's smooth and refined when you just want to take it easier. Talking of refinement, the Prelude is well-insulated from the outside world at cruising speeds.

There's no Euro NCAP rating for the Honda Prelude as of yet. Given it's a low-volume model we wouldn't be surprised if there never will be. For reference, the structurally similar Civic, which also has all the same safety assistance systems, achieved the full five-star rating in 2022.

Standard-fit safety equipment for the Prelude includes autonomous emergency braking, blind-spot detection, lane-keeping assistance, a driver attention monitor, traffic sign recognition, road departure mitigation, a cross-traffic monitor and adaptive cruise control.

The Honda Prelude's boot isn't massive, offering 269 litres of volume comparing not-so-favourably with the 390 litres in the BMW 2 Series Coupe. On the plus side, the Prelude does have a hatchback-style tailgate opening, which we prefer to the BMW's saloon-like bootlid, but heavier items will be tricky to load thanks to the very high lip.

Fold the Honda's rear seats down and you have a more useful 663 litres of space if loaded to the rear window line or 760 litres if loaded to the roof.

The Prelude makes more sense configured like this because with the rear bench in place, you'll struggle to get anyone other than kids back there. Unless they're petite, adult passengers will find the sloping roofline encroaching on headroom considerably. Legroom is also very limited in the back when the front seats are positioned for taller occupants. 

Speaking of which, although much of the dashboard is carried over from the Civic, the centre console is unique to the Prelude. It's chunky and deliberately so, making the driver and passenger feel more cocooned, yet neither front seats feels cramped. The unit offers plenty of storage cubbies, as well. 

The fit and finish of the Honda Prelude is exceptional inside and out, as we've come to expect from the brand. Everything in the cabin feels particularly solid, without being too utilitarian — there's a good array of premium-feeling, soft-touch materials and a pleasingly minimal use of that glossy, piano black-look plastic that manufacturers seem to love these days. 

It's pleasing to see so many proper buttons for various function rather than an over-reliance on a central touchscreen, plus it helps that the physical controls all work in a satisfying manner, especially the confirmatory clicks the rotary climate controls make with every turn.

The Honda Prelude shares its 10.2-inch touchscreen infotainment system with the Civic and it's... fine. It's on the smaller size as far as modern systems go and there's nothing particularly special about its graphics or colour schemes. It's easy enough to use, at least, and responsive enough. 

Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto feature as standard and it's easy to get your smartphone connected. The integration of Google Maps isn't brilliant, though — you can't pinch to zoom in/out or move the map around using touch inputs. Instead, you have to go into a different mode to adjust the scale or the map's positioning, before returning to the standard nav setup. It's a faff, frankly.

In better news, the Prelude's Bose sound system is impressive, with a good amount of low-end clout. 

Given all the specific engineering that's gone into making the Honda Prelude, from its unique bodywork to the clever simulated gear-shift system and all the new suspension parts, we wondered if there might be a chunky price tag to match. Thankfully, that's not the case.

The car is available from £40,995 in a single, relatively well-equipped trim grade, which isn't a huge rise on the £38,695 charged for a top-of-the-range Honda Civic. The closest thing the Prelude has for a rival, the BMW 220i M Sport Coupe, starts from £39,070 and provides plenty of options to inflate that figure further in the configurator. 

The Honda Prelude's fuel consumption of 54mpg is only a marginal drop from what's offered by the Civic. And what we've always liked about the Civic is that its real MPG is similar to the factory figures, which should also be the case with the Prelude. Sure enough, we were managing over 40mpg in the Prelude despite mostly driving it on twisty roads and making the most of its performance. Well over 50mpg should easily be doable in day-to-day driving. 

The Prelude will be liable for the same £195 flat rate of annual Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) — or road tax — from year two. It's just over the £40,000 threshold for the Expensive Car Supplement, so you'll also need to cough-up an extra £425 annually from years two to six.

Insurance groups hadn't been confirmed at the time of writing.

The Honda Prelude is offered in a single trim grade called Advance.

The Honda Prelude Advance includes the following equipment as standard:

• 19-inch alloy wheels
• Adaptive suspension
• 10.2-inch infotainment touchscreen
• 9.0-inch digital instrument cluster
• Bose sound system
• Wireless smartphone charging pad
• Leather front seats
• Interior ambient lighting
• Adaptive cruise control