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As the weather turns in the Midwest, morning temperatures are dropping fast, and roads are waking up slippery. This has given me a chance to explore a new side of my 2026 Honda Prelude long-term tester, encouraging me to take the long way home after an early-morning gym or school run. What side is this? Its handling.
As I’ve covered in previous blogs about this Prelude, the car has some flaws, most of which come down to packaging and value proposition. I’ll do deeper dives into several of those areas in the future; however, I’ve also elaborated that in other areas, like driving pleasure and performance, the car is an absolute banger.
Most car enthusiasts will agree that a car’s handling matters more to overall enjoyment than its horsepower. Most will agree that driving a slow car fast is way more fun than driving a fast car slow, and lastly, they’ll also agree that more power doesn’t always mean more better. Then, a sporty coupe like the Prelude hits the market with 200 hp, punchy hybrid torque, and the front-end hardware and geometry of the best hot-hatch on the market, and those same enthusiasts crap all over it—99% of them without ever seeing one, and basically all of them without ever driving one.
Jerry Perez
This week, I’ve gone out of my way during my morning errands to learn more about how the Prelude behaves under non-ideal conditions, and it’s been a lot of fun. My tester rides on the standard Goodyear Eagle Touring all-season tires, not the optional Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02 summer tires (which I will likely install next Spring), so there’s plenty of grip even at 48 degrees with a light drizzle. However, summon that hybrid torque mid-corner, and you can easily break into a controlled front-wheel drift that the suspension, chassis, and electronic aids will let you control beautifully without the car getting out of shape.
While we don’t have many exciting roads in my corner of Indiana, we do have lots of country roads, and, due to the rapid expansion of the suburbs, lots of wide, two-lane roundabouts in the middle of nowhere (for now). With the Prelude, I ventured into a few of them with traction control on and off to see how it reacted. Either way, it felt hooked and never lost its trajectory; what varied was how lively I had to be on the steering wheel to keep it that way.
Braking late into the corner is easy thanks to the stock Brembo brakes, which offer strong initial bite and plenty of pedal feedback. Once I start to turn the wheel to follow the roundabout, the car feels neutral and follows through as directed. Even with traction control on, there’s enough grip to practically floor the accelerator coming out of the corner with minimal drama, maybe just a quick blink of the traction control light on the dash. Repeat the same sequence but stab the throttle at turn-in (just like if you wanted the rear end to break loose in a RWD car), and even with traction control on, the car allows you to break the front tires into a controlled spin that you can hold with enough steering angle and throttle input.
Jerry Perez
Repeat the same with traction control off and S+ Shift on, and things get a lot livelier. Approach and braking feel the same, but forcing a downshift into first or second gear will make the front end want to understeer into the corner. Stabbing the throttle before it does so will correct course while quickly lighting up the tires thanks to that jolt of hybrid torque (40 lb-ft more than the Si), and you can easily do a full lap of the roundabout spinning the fronts in a nice, long, controlled motion—or so I think, because of course I would never do this on an empty public road out in the countryside.
With the nannies off, I had to work the wheel quickly and precisely to keep the car tucked in on a tight radius around the circle; otherwise, it will want to push wide. It feels like the rear end would step out and open up at a greater angle if I carried more speed, but I wasn’t willing to explore that with thick, tall concrete curves on the outside perimeter.
Combine this with the cheesy, fake (but very realistic-sounding) engine sounds coming out of the speakers, and the Prelude makes you feel like a hero, whether it’s a silly roundabout or a twisty country road. As I’ve said before, the car is so good and properly hooked up in the dry, but now that I’ve had a chance to play with it in damp, rainy conditions, it’s impressive how much grip it can squeeze from its setup. Best of all, though, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s as much fun to push as a cheap Fit or a pricey S2000; it’s not an uptight coupe just because it’s rockin’ a complex hybrid drivetrain. It has a soul.
Next up is winter, and with it, snow. We’ll see how that goes.
Previous Installments
Email the author at jerry@thedrive.com
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As deputy editor, Jerry draws on a decade of industry experience and a lifelong passion for motorsports to guide The Drive’s short- and long-term coverage.
