Everything We Know So Far About The 6th-Gen Honda Prelude

The Honda Prelude namesake is one that has been around for nearly 50 years and five generations at this point in time. Despite the model's widespread acclaim and praise over the years, it is a car that is often cast aside in the sea of brilliant Japanese cars to come out of the 1980s and 1990s. That's a bit ironic, as the Prelude was initially dreamed up to give Honda buyers a less forgettable and more engaging alternative to the established but hyper-civilized options of either the Civic or Accord. 

The Prelude had a rocky start when it was initially introduced in dull form for the 1978 model year. However, as Prelude advanced with the times, it became a serious competitor in the sports-coupe space, showcasing Honda's most advanced drivetrain technologies and taking the fight to BMW and Mazda in its fifth-generation. At the time, the legendary NSX was the only model that could challenge the Prelude in the Honda product line.

Following the discontinuation of the fifth-generation Prelude in 2001, the namesake was put on hiatus, as a combination of waning consumer interest in sports coupes and the Prelude's high price tag led to its demise. However, after two decades, Honda revealed the new sixth-gen Prelude during the Japanese Mobility Show in 2023. Initially released as a concept, there was speculation at the time as to whether or not the newest entry in the Prelude saga would make it to production. Over the past year, more details have come to light about the concept, which Honda confirmed as a full-fledged production model prior to this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed. While there isn't a set international production timeline yet, Honda confirmed that the Prelude will debut in Europe as soon as next year.

When the sixth-gen Prelude was unveiled in 2023, there was quite a bit of speculation surrounding the new model's powertrain. As with quite a few manufacturers these days, Honda is committed to transitioning to a zero-emissions lineup in the coming decades, claiming to be emissions-free by the year 2040. As a result, it only made sense that the company's newest flagship model would at the very least have some form of alternate powertrain. Those suspicions were confirmed a day before the car was unveiled, with Andrew Quillin, a spokesperson for Honda, taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, to clarify that the Prelude Concept is hybrid-electric but not a fully electric vehicle.

The confirmation of the Prelude's hybrid powertrain surfaced additional questions about what that powerplant might be, as Honda still hasn't released any specific details. With that said, we do have some benchmarks to go off of based on Honda's existing hybrid lineup. Honda just began rolling out the 2025 Honda Civic Hybrid, which features a 200-horsepower inline-four-cylinder hybrid engine. 

With speculations that the new Prelude will share the same modular platform that Honda uses for both the Civic and Accord, there is a strong possibility that the Prelude will use that very same powertrain. Interestingly, the Sport trim of the new Civic Hybrid doesn't feature a transmission at all, instead relying on a generator tied to the internal combustion powertrain to power an additional electric drive motor which sends power to the wheels. In addition to being a very efficient arrangement, the acceleration provided by an electric drive motor could significantly improve performance, a trait that Honda has claimed is a key focus of the new Prelude.

Across the Prelude's entire five-generation run, it has always remained a performance-oriented coupe. Based on the press photographs and comments made by Honda themselves, it appears that the sixth-Gen Prelude will stay mostly true to its lineage. The styling itself is consistent with previous generations of the nameplate, featuring a low-slung body and a single pair of doors. Its rounded body shape and strip-style rear tail light are reminiscent of the third and fourth-generationPreludes respectively with a 21st-century flair, bringing the model in line with modern styling.

Honda has been somewhat contradictory in their statements about the outright performance of the new Prelude. At the time of the Prelude Concept's initial unveiling in 2023, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe was quoted saying, "This model will become the prelude for our future models which will inherit the 'joy of driving' into the full-fledged electrified future and embody Honda's unalterable sports mindset." Despite the initially promising remarks about the sport-oriented intentions behind the Prelude's development, that sentiment was walked back a bit by Honda Chief Engineer Tomoyuki Yamagami who explained that the Prelude "isn't going to be the sportiest, zippiest car that's going to be tossed into the circuits" in an interview by CarsGuide in 2023. The sixth-gen Honda Prelude isn't set to appear on the road for a while and hasn't even been confirmed to come to the United States yet, meaning that only time will tell if the Prelude will live up to its previous generations.