The Honda Prelude Hybrid Will Make Do With an Automatic After All
Who so giveth can also taketh away. On one hand, Honda recently confirmed that a manual transmission for EVs was in the works (yay!). Yet with the other, the death knell is played for the rumored stick shift-equipped Prelude (nay!).
Depending on who you ask, the manual transmission is experiencing either a resurgence or a really slow death. Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen have kept sticks in their lineups, while Dodge discontinued its own, and Porsche’s appears to be on hiatus. But then you’ve got the likes of BMW and Mini, corporate siblings who apparently are both indecisive. Bimmers have by and large ditched the third pedal—the BMW M boss doesn’t care for them anyway—but somehow lets us have that “classic BMW feel” with the Z4, M2, M3, and M4. Mini canceled the clutch but also opened a stick-shift driving school. And now Honda is the latest to tug at our heartstrings before ripping them out completely. Sigh.
MotorTrend reports that the upcoming 2026 Honda Prelude will not be offered with a manual. Gone from our lives for nearly a quarter century, Honda surprised everyone during last year’s Japan Mobility Show with its unveiling of the Prelude Concept. The electrified concept was as sleek a two-door as one would hope for the coupe’s successor. However, from the beginning, Honda basically told us it wasn’t going to be a sports car.
“This isn’t going to be the sportiest, zippiest car that’s going to be tossed into the circuits, so that’s one thing,” Honda Chief Engineer Tomoyuki Yamagami told media at the time. “This is going to be the prelude for all of the electric vehicles that Honda is going to be launching.”
Thus, the return of the Prelude marks an end to another legacy stick-shift pairing—an omission that was confirmed by Honda Executive Vice President Shinji Aoyama. When the new Prelude goes into production next year, the coupe will be outfitted with the same hybrid powertrain as the 2025 Civic Hybrid, which produces a combined 200 horsepower and 232 pound-feet of torque, and is mated to a continuously variable transmission.
Supposedly, the Prelude will be tuned differently in order to distinguish itself from the Civic. We’ll find out soon enough if an automatic-equipped car with two fewer doors will offer up a distinctive enough personality.
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