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1988 Honda Prelude Si

Before we get stared I have to thank my buddy Rick Ruiz for being so enthusiastic about this project of mine, he jumped at the opportunity to help and was more than happy to have his Prelude be the first car featured. 

The prelude has always been an interesting car to me, not the car itself but more rather where it fit into Honda’s lineup. Honda had the Civic, Crx, Prelude, Accord, and Integra, all Front wheel drive, all had 4 cylinder engines, all of them had a two door variation. So why did Honda feel the need to produce this 2 door sport coupe if the CRX and the Civic were currently being sold? My guess is going for a traditional coupe style, the 2-door Civic and CRX came in hatches, and in the states hot-hatch culture was still in its infancy, so perhaps hatches weren’t appealing to the masses. Although, then I become confused, at the same time Honda was also selling the Accord, which came in more configurations, coupe, hatch, and sedan, the mid trim levels came with the same engine as the Prelude, and the coupes had extremely similar styling. So why would anyone buy a Prelude, when you could get an Accord with the same performance, more practicality, and more features? Simply put; marketing, the Accord was marketed as Honda’s mid-size family car with all the bells and whistles that you deserved, while the Prelude from its inception was marketed as a sports car, and oh what a sports car it was. At the time, Honda hadn’t revealed the NSX yet, so the prelude was the most powerful and most advanced car they had on offer. (Unless you opted for the base model which had a sad carbureted SOHC B20.) Under the hood of this Prelude sits a B20A5, a DOHC 2.0L 4 cylinder making 135 hp which was Honda’s biggest engine at the time. If you ever google search a third generation Prelude, one of the first things you’re bound to see is “1988 Prelude Si 4ws” 4ws, you’ll see it everywhere, 4ws is the Prelude’s most notable feature, a four wheel steering system, being the first ever in a mass produced passenger car. Four wheel steering systems were seen as the future in passenger cars in the 80s, but never quiet took off due to them being expensive, heavy, and their improvements subtle. They haven’t completely faded from existence though, up until 2005 GM tried using it on a few of their pickups and SUVs and currently BMW and Renault seem to be trying to reintroduce it. (Heres a link to an Autoweek article if you’d to know more about four wheel steering systems and how they work http://autoweek.com/article/car-life/four-wheel-steering-demystified ). The true advantages of a four wheel steering system were mostly felt at a track, were it would give you greatly increased maneuverability at high speeds, the biggest advantage most owners would feel is a smaller turning circle at low speeds, saved tons of people from doing 3-point turns I bet. While the handling advantages were seen as subtle, they were felt when in 1987 a Prelude with four wheel steering beat out true sports cars like the Corvette C4 in Road & Tracks slalom test. The 4ws wasn’t all sunshine and roses, it added a massive 500 pounds to the curb weight of the car, substantially impacting acceleration. I’ve been droning on about this four wheel steering system for long enough, sure its interesting but this Prelude doesn’t even have it. Why not? Well because the 4ws models were damn expensive, $17,945 MSRP, that is roughly $40,600 today, compare a Prelude to what you can buy today with forty thousand dollars and maybe it’ll be more clear why not everyone opted for the 4ws.

What about the styling? Well, at a quick glance, you can clearly tell its a late 80s Honda, might have to quint or look at a badge to tell if its a Prelude, Integra, or an Accord, but you at least know its one of those 3. Seriously google all those from 1988 and take a look, what was Honda thinking making them all look so incredibly similar? I know nowadays car companies give all their models the same basic grill or front end, but at least you can easily tell the difference between a Charger and a Dart. But back to the Prelude, look at its side profile, its body line, the top of the fender lines up perfectly with the bottom of the windows, and then the rear window curves up and gently tosses your eye along the trunk line. Its gorgeous and simplistic, none of the lines dart away in jagged directions to try and create a body line that isn’t there. The rub strip goes around the entire car, from wheel to wheel, bumper to bumper, and even on the wheel arches, because you’re gonna use this car, and you need that rub strip to protect all 360 degrees of you from shopping carts. Side note while we’re on the topic of shopping carts, holy hell the trunk space in this car is surprisingly massive. I wasn’t able to get a picture that properly captured how large the space was, but looking at it from the outside, the truck is about as deep as the rub strip on the bumper and goes all the way to the rear seats, it huge, bigger than you would expect. 

Another surprise of the trunk is actually the trunk lid itself. The trunk lid and quarterpanels are molded to create a very subtle lip on the trunk of the car. That feature alone does more to promote this cars sportiness than fake vents or aggressive lines ever could. Although speaking of vents, this car does have a pair and for awhile they puzzled me quiet a bit, both from a aesthetic and function point of view. You see the Prelude has these funny little vents or channels on both rear tail lights, they appear to have some depth to them so I’m gonna go ahead and assume they serve some function, and my best guess is for cabin air circulation. 

I could be 110% wrong but that is my best guess and I couldn’t find anything specifically related to them online that told me otherwise. The Prelude’s exterior has one more very interesting quirk/feature. Look at the hood and you’ll notice a piece of plastic, that looks very similar to the rub strips circling the car, laying horizontally a couple inches from the windshield. Yeah, that is a built in bug/wind deflector, in my mind one of the coolest features of the Prelude, sure it was marketed as a sports car but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some utilitarian features as well. The last thing to talk about on the exterior of this car is the wheels, everything about them screams 80s and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these were actually super rare Mazda Rx-7 wheels. Having a triangle design like that makes me think of a rotary more than anything.

Moving on to the interior. The interior has a nice balance of sports car styling and utilitarian features. The dash board, the center console, and the door panels all sweep forward giving that cockpit feeling seen in more aggressive cars like the Supra. But it counters that by having a large tray in the dash spanning from the glove box to gauge pod, allowing for lots space to set down any loose items.  It has a pod around the gauge cluster with lots of buttons on it similar to whats seen in cars like RX-7 and 300ZX. A humorous feature to me is the seat belt warning light mounted on the ceiling above the rear view mirror. I believe Saabs or Volvos have a similar feature, acting like a “fasten lap belt” light that you would see in an airplane. I find it hilarious to have that in this two door sports car where chances of you always having a full cabin were slim, but Honda gave it to you anyway so you’ll never have to tell your rear passengers to buckle up.

Perhaps this next part is nothing new to some people, but I personally have never come across a system like this before. The seat belts are 100% mounted on the door, not on the floor and the B pillar, not even on the seat, every part of the seat belt is in the door panel. Now when you first get in the car its different but you assume it serves the same purpose as ever other seat belt on every other car, until you try and open the door while you’re still buckled in and realize you can’t. Although even in the worst crash scenarios I can think of, a rescuer could still break the window and cut the seat belt, so I suppose it is not as big of a safety issue as I had first thought. Moving on to the seats, well, most notably they have a good amount of bolstering which was surprising to me given the cars age. There is even a little bit of bucket styling to these seats, its very mild but its there making driving this car quiet comfortable. So how is the drive? Well, quite good to put it simply. I got to drive this car the way most people who would end up owning one would, around tight neighborhood and small town streets. I didn’t drive it on a track, and I didn’t to take it on the highway to test how well that wind deflector worked. I stayed in the neighborhood around Rick’s house and timidly ventured onto one of main roads to get it up to about 50mph. I say timidly because I don’t know my way around Highland, Rick didn’t come with me, and my phone had died. So unfortunately my time driving was just as must spent trying to navigate as it was spent trying to get a feel for the Prelude. For being Honda’s biggest engine at the time, don’t expect to be blown away. Power is adequate, it gets the job done and certainly allows for some spirited driving when you want it. Its exactly what you expect, a nice balance of being fun enough for spirited driving, but practical enough for some great fuel economy. Of course being as it wasn’t my car and Rick wasn’t with me I didn’t want to floor it and be hard on the Prelude without Rick’s consent, although I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.

Where this car really excels is its steering, not its handling, its steering. The steering is extremely light, you could steer it with your little finger, better yet, you could steer it by blowing on the steering wheel if you tried. Stopped, at low speed, at cruising speed, its incredibly easy to maneuver, there is zero resistance in the steering wheel. My best guess as to why its so light, is that it has a very power power steering pump, as well as light weight steering components to compensate for the whopping 500lbs added by the optional four wheel steering.

The third generation Prelude is a great car, a fantastic car, its appealing, fun, simplistic, and practical. These cars are turning 30 years old, they’re slowly fading from the streets, normal buyers have no faith in a 3 decade old Honda sport coupe. If you find one, buy it, save it, enjoy this piece automotive history, and preserve it. In a few short years they’ll be 40, and the prices will rise as they appeal to enthusiast, collectors, and people who enjoy weird 80s tech. Rick is a lucky man to have found this car in such great shape, where we can admire it very close to as it looked new.

1988 Honda Prelude in Barbados Yellow - Simply good looking.

Sources:

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1978 Corvette Indy 500 Pace Car comes home

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1988 Honda Prelude Si

Before we get stared I have to thank my buddy Rick Ruiz for being so enthusiastic about this project of mine, he jumped at the opportunity to help and was more than happy to have his Prelude be the first car featured. 

The prelude has always been an interesting car to me, not the car itself but more rather where it fit into Honda’s lineup. Honda had the Civic, Crx, Prelude, Accord, and Integra, all Front wheel drive, all had 4 cylinder engines, all of them had a two door variation. So why did Honda feel the need to produce this 2 door sport coupe if the CRX and the Civic were currently being sold? My guess is going for a traditional coupe style, the 2-door Civic and CRX came in hatches, and in the states hot-hatch culture was still in its infancy, so perhaps hatches weren’t appealing to the masses. Although, then I become confused, at the same time Honda was also selling the Accord, which came in more configurations, coupe, hatch, and sedan, the mid trim levels came with the same engine as the Prelude, and the coupes had extremely similar styling. So why would anyone buy a Prelude, when you could get an Accord with the same performance, more practicality, and more features? Simply put; marketing, the Accord was marketed as Honda’s mid-size family car with all the bells and whistles that you deserved, while the Prelude from its inception was marketed as a sports car, and oh what a sports car it was. At the time, Honda hadn’t revealed the NSX yet, so the prelude was the most powerful and most advanced car they had on offer. (Unless you opted for the base model which had a sad carbureted SOHC B20.) Under the hood of this Prelude sits a B20A5, a DOHC 2.0L 4 cylinder making 135 hp which was Honda’s biggest engine at the time. If you ever google search a third generation Prelude, one of the first things you’re bound to see is “1988 Prelude Si 4ws” 4ws, you’ll see it everywhere, 4ws is the Prelude’s most notable feature, a four wheel steering system, being the first ever in a mass produced passenger car. Four wheel steering systems were seen as the future in passenger cars in the 80s, but never quiet took off due to them being expensive, heavy, and their improvements subtle. They haven’t completely faded from existence though, up until 2005 GM tried using it on a few of their pickups and SUVs and currently BMW and Renault seem to be trying to reintroduce it. (Heres a link to an Autoweek article if you’d to know more about four wheel steering systems and how they work http://autoweek.com/article/car-life/four-wheel-steering-demystified ). The true advantages of a four wheel steering system were mostly felt at a track, were it would give you greatly increased maneuverability at high speeds, the biggest advantage most owners would feel is a smaller turning circle at low speeds, saved tons of people from doing 3-point turns I bet. While the handling advantages were seen as subtle, they were felt when in 1987 a Prelude with four wheel steering beat out true sports cars like the Corvette C4 in Road & Tracks slalom test. The 4ws wasn’t all sunshine and roses, it added a massive 500 pounds to the curb weight of the car, substantially impacting acceleration. I’ve been droning on about this four wheel steering system for long enough, sure its interesting but this Prelude doesn’t even have it. Why not? Well because the 4ws models were damn expensive, $17,945 MSRP, that is roughly $40,600 today, compare a Prelude to what you can buy today with forty thousand dollars and maybe it’ll be more clear why not everyone opted for the 4ws.

What about the styling? Well, at a quick glance, you can clearly tell its a late 80s Honda, might have to quint or look at a badge to tell if its a Prelude, Integra, or an Accord, but you at least know its one of those 3. Seriously google all those from 1988 and take a look, what was Honda thinking making them all look so incredibly similar? I know nowadays car companies give all their models the same basic grill or front end, but at least you can easily tell the difference between a Charger and a Dart. But back to the Prelude, look at its side profile, its body line, the top of the fender lines up perfectly with the bottom of the windows, and then the rear window curves up and gently tosses your eye along the trunk line. Its gorgeous and simplistic, none of the lines dart away in jagged directions to try and create a body line that isn’t there. The rub strip goes around the entire car, from wheel to wheel, bumper to bumper, and even on the wheel arches, because you’re gonna use this car, and you need that rub strip to protect all 360 degrees of you from shopping carts. Side note while we’re on the topic of shopping carts, holy hell the trunk space in this car is surprisingly massive. I wasn’t able to get a picture that properly captured how large the space was, but looking at it from the outside, the truck is about as deep as the rub strip on the bumper and goes all the way to the rear seats, it huge, bigger than you would expect. 

Another surprise of the trunk is actually the trunk lid itself. The trunk lid and quarterpanels are molded to create a very subtle lip on the trunk of the car. That feature alone does more to promote this cars sportiness than fake vents or aggressive lines ever could. Although speaking of vents, this car does have a pair and for awhile they puzzled me quiet a bit, both from a aesthetic and function point of view. You see the Prelude has these funny little vents or channels on both rear tail lights, they appear to have some depth to them so I’m gonna go ahead and assume they serve some function, and my best guess is for cabin air circulation. 

I could be 110% wrong but that is my best guess and I couldn’t find anything specifically related to them online that told me otherwise. The Prelude’s exterior has one more very interesting quirk/feature. Look at the hood and you’ll notice a piece of plastic, that looks very similar to the rub strips circling the car, laying horizontally a couple inches from the windshield. Yeah, that is a built in bug/wind deflector, in my mind one of the coolest features of the Prelude, sure it was marketed as a sports car but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some utilitarian features as well. The last thing to talk about on the exterior of this car is the wheels, everything about them screams 80s and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these were actually super rare Mazda Rx-7 wheels. Having a triangle design like that makes me think of a rotary more than anything.

Moving on to the interior. The interior has a nice balance of sports car styling and utilitarian features. The dash board, the center console, and the door panels all sweep forward giving that cockpit feeling seen in more aggressive cars like the Supra. But it counters that by having a large tray in the dash spanning from the glove box to gauge pod, allowing for lots space to set down any loose items.  It has a pod around the gauge cluster with lots of buttons on it similar to whats seen in cars like RX-7 and 300ZX. A humorous feature to me is the seat belt warning light mounted on the ceiling above the rear view mirror. I believe Saabs or Volvos have a similar feature, acting like a “fasten lap belt” light that you would see in an airplane. I find it hilarious to have that in this two door sports car where chances of you always having a full cabin were slim, but Honda gave it to you anyway so you’ll never have to tell your rear passengers to buckle up.

Perhaps this next part is nothing new to some people, but I personally have never come across a system like this before. The seat belts are 100% mounted on the door, not on the floor and the B pillar, not even on the seat, every part of the seat belt is in the door panel. Now when you first get in the car its different but you assume it serves the same purpose as ever other seat belt on every other car, until you try and open the door while you’re still buckled in and realize you can’t. Although even in the worst crash scenarios I can think of, a rescuer could still break the window and cut the seat belt, so I suppose it is not as big of a safety issue as I had first thought. Moving on to the seats, well, most notably they have a good amount of bolstering which was surprising to me given the cars age. There is even a little bit of bucket styling to these seats, its very mild but its there making driving this car quiet comfortable. So how is the drive? Well, quite good to put it simply. I got to drive this car the way most people who would end up owning one would, around tight neighborhood and small town streets. I didn’t drive it on a track, and I didn’t to take it on the highway to test how well that wind deflector worked. I stayed in the neighborhood around Rick’s house and timidly ventured onto one of main roads to get it up to about 50mph. I say timidly because I don’t know my way around Highland, Rick didn’t come with me, and my phone had died. So unfortunately my time driving was just as must spent trying to navigate as it was spent trying to get a feel for the Prelude. For being Honda’s biggest engine at the time, don’t expect to be blown away. Power is adequate, it gets the job done and certainly allows for some spirited driving when you want it. Its exactly what you expect, a nice balance of being fun enough for spirited driving, but practical enough for some great fuel economy. Of course being as it wasn’t my car and Rick wasn’t with me I didn’t want to floor it and be hard on the Prelude without Rick’s consent, although I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.

Where this car really excels is its steering, not its handling, its steering. The steering is extremely light, you could steer it with your little finger, better yet, you could steer it by blowing on the steering wheel if you tried. Stopped, at low speed, at cruising speed, its incredibly easy to maneuver, there is zero resistance in the steering wheel. My best guess as to why its so light, is that it has a very power power steering pump, as well as light weight steering components to compensate for the whopping 500lbs added by the optional four wheel steering.

The third generation Prelude is a great car, a fantastic car, its appealing, fun, simplistic, and practical. These cars are turning 30 years old, they’re slowly fading from the streets, normal buyers have no faith in a 3 decade old Honda sport coupe. If you find one, buy it, save it, enjoy this piece automotive history, and preserve it. In a few short years they’ll be 40, and the prices will rise as they appeal to enthusiast, collectors, and people who enjoy weird 80s tech. Rick is a lucky man to have found this car in such great shape, where we can admire it very close to as it looked new.

1988 Honda Prelude in Barbados Yellow - Simply good looking.

Sources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Prelude

Cargurus: https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/1988-Honda-Prelude-Overview-c3876