The Honda Prelude is back, at least in concept car form. Shown at this year’s Japan Mobility Show, the two-door sports car is an electrified return of the nameplate that was stuck on front-engined, front-wheel drive sports cars for several decades until it was retired in 2001.
The problem is, details about the new Prelude are so thin you’d need a pair of tweezers to take them out of the Tokyo car show bucket of reveals. One piece of information is already out on the table – the fact that it’s electric.
The second drop of official info is that the Prelude Concept will bake in the “joy of driving” into future electrified Honda models. And that’s about it. No photos of the interior, no details about the powertrain. In fact, the concept’s reveal was right at the end of the Japanese automaker’s presentation, after electric aircraft, jets, micro-mobility solutions, and the partnership with GM’s Cruise autonomous taxi business.
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However, we have eyes, and the white two-door, zero-emissions concept looks production-ready, seeing how it doesn’t have any over-the-top features like external displays, crazy headlights, or anything like that.
Usually, concept cars that are bound to collect dust in a warehouse after being shown to the world have triple-hinged doors, retracting steering wheels, and floor-mounted displays, but the Prelude has none of those – that we know of, at least.
Furthermore, the word on the show floor is that underneath the sheet metal, General Motors’ Ultium platform is nowhere to be found, leading us to believe that it may be based on Honda’s own e:Architecture that will underpin several 2026-bound battery-powered vehicles.
Some of these will be built at Honda’s Marysville Auto Plant in Ohio, as opposed to the Ultium-based Prologue SUV and Acura ZDX that are assembled at GM’s Mexico plant in Ramos Arizpe next to the Chevrolet Blazer EV.
“The Prelude Concept is a specialty sports model that will offer an exhilarating experience that makes you want to keep going forever and extraordinary excitement you never felt before,” said Honda President, Toshihiro Mibe. “In order to offer the ‘joy of driving’ only Honda can realize, we are diligently progressing with development, so please keep your expectations high for this model,” he added.
We can dream, can’t we?