Prelude and feud

Honda's coupé is back after a 25-year break and this time it's playing a different, hybrid tune. MATT SAUNDERS pits it against Golf and Prius rivals

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Great rivals aren't in the habit of doing each other favours. Would Borg and McEnroe have lent each other a racket? David Coulthard says Michael Schumacher once let him borrow a spare racing helmet. But what if Damon Hill had asked?

You have to wonder, therefore, if Toyota actually considered Honda a great rival when in 1978 - in an act so widely reported as an 'amicable transfer' as surely to have been how the parties directly involved described it - the rights to a certain model name trademark that Toyota happened to own were signed over to its domestic-market competitor.

That's how the Honda Prelude got its name. Toyota's way of 'amicably' acknowledging Honda's penchant for model titles with musical themes, supposedly. I don't buy it. Of all of those (and between the Ballade, Concerto, Quintet, Jazz and Beat there would be plenty), only the Accord existed in 1978. Not enough established precedent, surely. There must have been some other quid pro quo.

At any rate, it was the spark of life for a line of mid-sized, front-drive coupés that eventually brought some interesting new technologies to affordable levels of the new car market throughout the 1980s and 1990s - only to bow out in 2001. The Prelude had blooded mechanical four-wheel steering and an early form of front-axle torque vectoring before it left the stage, as well as benefiting from Honda's celebrated VTEC combustion technology.

So long was the hiatus that the car subsequently took, however, that Honda had to re-register the Prelude trademark in the North American market in 2023. While some attentive hacks noticed, few seemed to know whether to be excited or not.