Could the Honda Prelude Come to the U.S. as a Sporty Hybrid?

Honda officially calls the reborn Prelude it showed off at this year’s Tokyo show a concept car. Unofficially, we think it’s better to deem this a near-production prototype.

We’re not Nostradamus, but we are pretty good at spotting the difference between a definitive concept car that serves as a design study or as a meter for public reaction, and a production car that’s been given the “concept” car treatment. This Prelude concept strikes us as the latter.

Why? Look at the body itself. There are cutlines for the front and rear bumper covers, cutlines for the side skirts, rear reflectors, rearview mirrors, and windshield wipers. To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, “we know a production car when we see it.”

What we don’t know, however, is just about anything about the mechanical bits that make up the surely greenlit production Prelude. We can make some educated guesses, though.

For instance, it’s likely the Prelude concept was designed around the modular platform that underpins vehicles such as the Civic and Accord. In this sense, we predict the Prelude will effectively replace the now-discontinued Civic coupe (and, in a way, the Accord coupe) in Honda’s model line.

Though the Prelude concept’s missing exhaust system implies it’s an electric vehicle, we still wager a production Prelude will arrive first as a hybrid. Per Honda, the Prelude concept “will become the prelude for our future models, which will inherit the ‘joy of driving’ in the full-fledged electrified future.”

Note the use of “electrified future” and not “electric future.” Electrified, of course, is marketing speak for “there’s an electric component to this powertrain.” This may mean a full-fledged battery-electric setup or it could mean a gasoline-electric hybrid one.

Many automakers include the latter types of powertrains when announcing their plan to offer an entirely “electrified” lineup, and given Honda’s limited line of battery-electric vehicles—the first of which coming to North America use General Motors components as opposed to internally developed ones—we believe it means much the same in this instance.

Cribbing the hybrid setup from the CR-V or Accord (or presumably the upcoming Civic Hybrid) seems like the easiest way for Honda to achieve this goal. However, it’s possible the automaker develops a starter-generator “mild-hybrid” system for the Prelude’s powertrain, allowing the coupe to come with a multi-speed transmission while simultaneously ensuring the car lives up to Honda’s promise of a “full-fledged electrified future.” We also wouldn’t rule out a full-on battery-electric Prelude being offered, but we highly doubt it’ll be the model’s only powertrain option.

Mind you, all of this is merely conjecture on our end, and we’re not at all claiming certainty. Still, we’d bet decent money the Prelude concept morphs into a production Prelude, and more than likely it’ll come with a gas engine that’s accompanied by either an electric drive motor or a 48-volt starter-generator system.