2026 Honda Prelude Review: I wasn’t expecting such a head turner

In Comfort you get in, the ride is soft, the powertrain is quiet, and the engine cuts if possible. Switch to GT, and the Prelude’s cooling gets a little dry, the steering feels heavy, and if you use the S+—which mimics an eight-speed gearbox by changing the shift maps and adaptive braking—the shifts are a little lighter to give the driver feedback.

Games take this further; the engine remains running to feed the energy in the battery or the motors for a second, and in the S +, the changes are very violent (even if only a little – we are not talking about the sequential breakdown box or anything), and the powertrain is at (still unknown) very loud.

It may not be an all-out sports car, but it still drives.

Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

I found the GT to be a sweet spot for the car. Power response is better than turbocharged non-hybrids, perhaps not as sharp as the more sporty EVs. The party’s trick S+ mode paddle-shift system works well on twisty roads, giving drivers extra control. However, most of the time, I leave the S+ inactive and just use the wheel paddles to change the amount of brake regeneration, which can be as low as 0.02 g for coasting or up to 0.2 g, which is less than you will find in most battery EVs but still strong enough to replicate the braking effect of the engine.

Fun for the Type-R

There is more to driving a car than simply driving it but including the powertrain. The front and rear axles have been stretched like the Civic Type-R, which gives the Prelude its dual-axis front and rear multilink suspension, as well as its adjustable dampers, which have also been revised for better handling. (The hard setting in the Prelude is slightly softer than the soft setting in the Type-R.)

So, there’s plenty of grip, especially on the ($1,200) summer tires fitted to our test Prelude. The hybrid powertrain encourages a dynamic movement rather than using a point and squirt method, and there is a lot of grip in the front that you can see faster than you expect, with nary a squeal or tire noise when you move quickly through the surface. And while the curb weight is better than the Miata or BRZ, compared to the usual diet of crossovers and EVs, the Prelude feels much lighter and lighter.