Honda Prelude chalks up huge interest

Honda Australia seemed to be on a hiding to nothing. Its move to an agency sales model, removed pricing negotiation for customers, popular cars were culled, new generation vehicles increased in price and sales plummeted.

A high of 51,525 vehicles in 2018 became 13,734 in 2023. But there are now signs of a renaissance.

Sales have increased the past two years – albeit modestly – and the stability of its core SUV range has allowed it to diversify into enthusiast models like the new 2026 Honda Prelude coupe and Super-ONE kei car. Honda Australia Director Robert Thorp explains what’s next.

“Before revealing it today already we had 4000 people give us their names, email addresses and phone numbers and register that expression of interest,” says the Honda Australia boss, Robert Thorp, of the new Prelude Coupe, which just made its local debut at the 2026 Melbourne Motor Show.

“So that alone is showing the pulling power this model actually has.

“What it’s doing is helping draw eyeballs back onto the Honda brand and hopefully allow us to get ourselves back on the shopping lists and showcase what this car can do, but equally how good our core models are as well.”

Thorp is even more succinct when explaining why Honda has taken the decision to do what no other brand has ever really done in Australia and import a tiny Kei car from Japan, the Super-ONE electric city car.

“It’s cool. Whenever you’re bringing a product to market, you have to do all your sums and do the analysis and do the volume and the price and all those equations.

“And you’re not going to bring models to market that don’t make sense. But occasionally things like the Super-ONE, it ticks a few of those boxes, but it ticks a few more for us.

“It takes the opportunity for us to enter the BEV market for the very first time. It is a cool, funky, unique model and there is nothing like it in market.

“So again, the ability for a vehicle like that to draw people back, draw people to the Honda brand, is really important for us, and we want to make sure that people see the Honda brand as something that’s fun, but importantly, fun to drive.”

Honda has been able to diversify its offering thanks to its core SUV range – the HR-V, ZR-V and CR-V – all performing strongly in market.

Not only have sales increased, but a variant breakdown shows that in the case of the ZR-V and CR-V, the range-topping hybrid offerings are easily the most popular, and the HR-V isn’t far behind.

“I think our recent sales performance improvement is off the back of a strategy that was designed a while ago that is ultimately coming to fruition,” explains Thorp.

“Certainly, in the last 12-24 months we’ve been very clear that we wanted to grow our volume but...make sure that we do it in a very sensible way.

“Part of that strategy is recognising that from a mass market perspective, hybrid is core to that.

“We’ve always had that view that, yes, people will jump to electric, but for the majority of people, the transition will be through hybrid first and so our strategy has been very much built around that.

“You can throw volume out to the market and discount it and cut margins, but it’s not really sustainable. It’s not really an approach that we’re interested in taking. Our core is CR-V, ZR-V, HR-V and I think we’re in a position where we’ve now got that core right.”

With that portfolio strategy established, 2026 for Honda is about growing sales incrementally with a wider hybrid SUV range while using models like the Prelude and Super-ONE to bring people into dealerships and connect with enthusiasts who have had nothing but the very focused $79,000 Civic Type R to engage with in Honda showrooms.

“Now we’ve got that core strength right,” says Thorp, “our ability then to shift into things like the Prelude, the Super ONE, allows us to build off a really sound foundation and actually use these [cars] for that they’re designed for, which is for customers to have great fun with.

“I think the Type R allows us to connect with definitely a hardcore driving audience and that’s not the car that’s necessarily going to be one for everybody. However, if you think of any different type of customer segment that exists in the market, I could almost see Prelude dragging in a customer from anywhere.

“There are some, well, I don’t want to say direct competitors, but competitors that have a similar sort of setup. At the same time, it’s a hybrid; there’s no hybrid like this in the market right now.

“I can see some current Civic customers showing an interest in this, I can see people from the ’90s who used to be in love with the Prelude, or that was their dream car when they were growing up, actually coming back and having a look at this.

“So I can see people from all walks of life having an interest in this vehicle.”

The Honda Prelude will be launched to the Australian market shortly with the Super-ONE following later in 2026.

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