The Honda Prelude title will return to Australian showrooms for the primary time in 25 years with its deliberate arrival in mid-2026, nevertheless it gained’t sit alongside any direct rivals nor set gross sales charts on fireplace, in accordance 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 Subaru BRZ 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 may neatly say, it’s a direct competitor of that – it’s simply seen in numerous totally different areas,” stated 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 very enjoyable automobile, nevertheless 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 section and I feel that’s the chance that we get to leverage.”
Within the Prelude’s closing yr in Australia, 2001, complete gross sales throughout the ‘Sports activities’ section 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 section noticed 10,633 gross sales, making up an excellent smaller 0.87 per cent share of all new vehicles bought (not together with manufacturers like Mahindra, Tesla and Polestar manufacturers, which don’t report back to the official VFACTS figures, and would scale back this quantity additional).
Whereas the worth of the Prelude in Australia is but to be introduced, it’s going to enter a dramatically totally different battleground when it returns in mid-2026 – however does the sports activities automobile market have room for one more competitor in Prelude?
“Sure, we expect it does,” Honda Australia managing director Ron Thorp informed CarExpert.
“We’ve really been planning this for a short time, and … the character of the mannequin is it doesn’t match a market section simply.
“It’ll, from a VFACTS perspective and pricing, however the buyer who we expect can be , it’s going to be fairly a large, broad base.”
“If you happen to take a look at [Civic] Sort R, we all know who needs to purchase Sort R,” Mr Thorp stated.
“Trying on the Prelude, it might be a sports activities vehicles individual, however you might 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 numerous shoppers again to the Honda model.
“You’ll be able to see it opening as much as a feminine viewers as effectively due to the best way it appears to be like and drives and handles.
“We type of assume that that is the place the shopper section group may be,” Mr Thorp stated, with the Prelude doubtlessly capable of “entice numerous totally different folks from numerous totally different areas”.
“It’s additionally going to offer a possibility to really conquest and communicate to new clients on the similar time, and the mixture of the 2 will permit us to generate nice [brand] consciousness and begin to put Honda on a consideration listing.”
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