The Honda prelude identify will return to Australian showrooms for the primary time in 25 years with its deliberate arrival in mid-2026, however it gained’t sit alongside any direct rivals nor set gross sales charts on hearth, in line with the model.
The Prelude was beforehand a mainstay in a extremely aggressive sports activities automobile market which has shrunk to a handful of fashions, together with the Subar quick and Toyota GR86, Ford Mustang, Nissan z and Toyota Supra.
In line with Honda, none of those are direct rivals to the 2026 Prelude, which would be the first to supply a hybrid powertrain.
“By the character of it, it’s going to be a bit of bit available in the market. There isn’t going to be something you’ll be able to neatly say, it’s a direct competitor of that – it’s simply seen in quite a lot of totally different areas,” mentioned Honda Australia managing director, Rob Thorp.
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The sentiment is backed up by Honda Australia CEO Jay Joseph, who informed CarExpert: “Prelude is a extremely enjoyable automobile, however it’s not a high-volume automobile.
“It’s a little bit of a Swiss Military Knife – it actually doesn’t match neatly right into a phase and I feel that’s the chance that we get to leverage.”
Within the Prelude’s remaining yr in Australia, 2001, whole gross sales throughout the ‘Sports activities’ phase had been 8820 throughout all makes, making up 1.14 per cent of all of the 772,681 new autos bought that yr.
In 2024, the identical Sports activities phase noticed 10,633 gross sales, making up a good smaller 0.87 per cent share of all new automobiles bought (not together with manufacturers like Mahindra, Tesla and Polestar manufacturers, which don’t report back to the official VFACTS figures, and would cut back this quantity additional).
Whereas the value of the Prelude in Australia is but to be introduced, it is going to enter a dramatically totally different battleground when it returns in mid-2026 – however does the sports activities automobile market have room for an additional competitor in Prelude?
“Sure, we expect it does,” Honda Australia managing director Ron Thorp informed CarExpert.
“We’ve truly been planning this for a short while, and … the character of the mannequin is it doesn’t match a market phase simply.
“It’s going to, from a VFACTS perspective and pricing, however the buyer who we expect will probably be , it’s going to be fairly a large, broad base.”
“If you happen to have a look at (Civic) Kind Rwe all know who desires to purchase Kind R,” Mr Thorp mentioned.
“Wanting on the Prelude, it may very well be a sports activities automobiles individual, however you may type of see, to be sincere, older males who used to personal them again within the 90s shopping for them once more – I feel it’s going to reattract quite a lot of customers again to the Honda model.
“You’ll be able to see it opening as much as a feminine viewers as properly due to the best way it appears and drives and handles.
“We type of suppose that that is the place the shopper phase group is perhaps,” Mr Thorp mentioned, with the Prelude probably in a position to “entice quite a lot of totally different individuals from quite a lot of totally different areas”.
“It’s additionally going to offer a possibility to truly conquest and communicate to new prospects on the identical time, and the mixture of the 2 will permit us to generate nice (model) consciousness and begin to put Honda on a consideration record.”
Extra: Every thing Honda
