Cars With Maks

I went into the Honda dealership genuinely wanting to like the Prelude. A two-door coupe, a proper nameplate with actual history behind it, styling that doesn’t look like it was designed by committee. On paper, everything about this car should have had me on side before I’d even sat in it.

Then I actually drove it, and the whole thing fell apart within about the first roundabout.

Slow Doesn’t Begin to Cover It

Here’s the number that matters most: 181 horsepower, out of a 2.0-litre hybrid setup that Honda seems very proud of. That gets you 0 to 100kmh in about 8.2 seconds, which is not a typo, and which is a genuinely alarming figure for a car wearing a badge that used to mean something in the performance world. This is a two-door coupe with a starting price around €48,000, and it is, by any honest measure, slow. Not “slow for a hybrid.” Not “slow but it makes up for it elsewhere.” Just slow, in the way that makes overtaking on a normal country road feel like a small negotiation with the laws of physics rather than something you just do.

The worst part isn’t even the number itself. It’s how the car delivers it. Because it’s running a CVT, there’s no actual gearchange happening, just a continuous, slightly rubbery surge of power that never really builds to anything. Honda’s fitted paddle shifters and programmed in simulated gear steps, complete with a manufactured sound to go with each fake shift, and driving it feels less like driving a coupe and more like watching someone mime driving a coupe. You pull a paddle, the car makes a noise, and functionally nothing changes underneath you. It’s a special effect bolted onto a genuinely underwhelming powertrain, and once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it.

What the Prelude Used to Be

This is where it actually stings, because the Prelude name isn’t some marketing team’s invention. It used to mean something specific and genuinely good. The fourth-generation Prelude from the early nineties, the one with the double wishbone suspension front and rear, a naturally aspirated VTEC engine that actually wanted to be revved past 7,000rpm to find its power, and a proper manual gearbox as standard, was one of the great front-drive driver’s cars of its era. Some versions even came with four-wheel steering, genuinely useful, genuinely engaging technology, not a gimmick bolted on for a spec sheet. It was quick, it was chuckable, and crucially, it asked something of the driver in exchange for the fun it gave back.

The new car shares almost nothing with that except the badge and the two doors. Where the old Prelude revved hard and rewarded you for working it, the new one is front-wheel drive, CVT-only, tuned entirely for comfort over any kind of driver engagement, and makes do with a fake soundtrack where the old car had a genuinely great sounding, genuinely responsive engine. It’s the difference between a car that trusted the driver to be part of the experience, and a car that’s decided the driver mostly just needs to be kept comfortable and gently reassured.

Nice Enough, If You Forget Why You’re There

I’ll give credit where it’s due, because it’s not all bad. The interior is genuinely well put together, properly Honda in the way that means everything feels solid and screwed together properly rather than merely expensive-looking. The ride is smooth, the cabin’s quiet, and Honda’s borrowed some proper suspension hardware from the Civic Type R, so on a smooth road it does actually turn in with more composure than the underwhelming power figures would suggest. If you removed all context about what this car is supposed to be and just experienced it as a comfortable, well screwed together small coupe, it’s pleasant enough.

But that’s exactly the problem. You can’t remove the context. It’s called Prelude. It’s shaped like a driver’s car. It’s priced close enough to a base BMW 2 Series that you’d genuinely cross-shop the two. And then it drives like a well insulated Civic that’s had all the excitement quietly engineered out of it in the name of efficiency and comfort.

So Who Actually Buys This

This is the question I couldn’t shake the entire drive, and I still can’t answer it convincingly. It’s too slow and too numb to appeal to anyone who actually wants a fun, engaging coupe, which was always the entire point of this shape of car, and exactly what the old Prelude delivered without apology. It’s too expensive and too impractical, with genuinely cramped rear seats and a small boot, to work as a sensible daily for someone who just wants an efficient hybrid runabout, when a regular Civic does that job for meaningfully less money with more usable space. It’s not a performance car. It’s not really a practical car either. It occupies this strange, narrow gap between the two, priced as if it’s competing with cars that actually deliver on one side or the other, and it does neither convincingly.

Two-door coupes used to exist for one very simple reason: they made you feel something behind the wheel, even in a modest, everyday sort of car, and you accepted a smaller back seat and a slightly impractical boot as the fair trade for that feeling. The old Prelude understood this completely. The new one asks you to accept exactly the same practicality trade-offs, at a genuinely premium price point, while delivering almost none of the feeling that used to justify making that trade in the first place.

I left the dealership without a good answer for who this car is actually for. Not the enthusiast, who’ll be bored within the first kilometre. Not the practical buyer, who’s better served elsewhere for less money. Somewhere in the middle sits a genuinely well built, genuinely comfortable car with absolutely no clear reason to exist, wearing a badge that used to promise the exact opposite of that.