To herald the long-awaited return of the Prelude in Japan, Honda opened a pop-up curry cafe. If you’ve never had the pleasure of downing a plate of proper Japanese curry you’re seriously missing out, but what is the association between curry and a hybrid coupe, one may justifiably wonder. Well, Honda wanted to appeal to a younger demographic and figured a tomato-based spiced pork stew was the key to unlocking the youth vote.
Honda recently conducted a survey of Japanese men and women in their 20s and found that only 32.8 percent said they were interested in cars. This was a big contrast to the 80s, when the Prelude (and many other Honda models) were hugely popular with twenty-somethings. Owning a second-gen Prelude was the ultimate status symbol for a college-age male, and the ultimate flex for a young woman was having a boyfriend who drove a Prelude.
Honda named temporary restaurant Preludo (do means food hall and the name is a pun on Prelude) and sought to recapture some of that energy. Honda placed the cafe in Shibuya, a hip district in Tokyo popular for its shopping and nightlife. They parked a bright red Prelude parked in front and hung images of past Prelude generations on the wall. The curry was priced at just ¥500 ($3.20 USD) per dish, a throwback to 1980s prices.
After ordering, patrons could sit at a table with a placemat that looks like the view of the Prelude’s dashboard from driver’s seat. Available bibs resembled a seat belt. The curry itself, made by renowned curry chef Monko Ichijo, who said, “The challenge of expressing Prelude in a curry was the first and biggest challenge in my long career of making curry.”
Ichijo paried each serving with six spices, meant to represent the six driving modes of the Prelude. The official menu goes into insanely elaborate detail on this. For example, the Prelude is tragically only available as an automatic e:CVT, but “Sport Mode with S+ Shift” — a mapping that mimics shifting gears — the spice is described thusly:
Of the six flavors, this one has the most captivating and exciting driving characteristics, expressed by coarsely grinding Sichuan peppercorns and chili peppers. The addictive spiciness of mala, combined with the gorgeous aroma of Sichuan peppercorns, creates a stimulating ride.
On the other hand, the “Comfort” setting is associated with cardamom, fennel, and cinnamon, while the “GT” setting is expressed with coarsely ground cumin and coriander.
Sadly, the Prelude itself isn’t quite as spicy. It’s essentially a Civic Hybrid coupe and uses that car’s drivetrain, good for 200 horsepower and 232 lb-ft of torque. Most shockingly, it’ll retail for around $40,000 in the US, a price with which you could get a new stick-shift RWD Nissan Z with 400 horses. As it stands, we’re not sure this is how to curry favor with young drivers.
Images courtesy of Honda.
In the specification as published, the Prelude is dead in the water in the US Market.
I guess that personally it doesn’t matter for me anymore, I gave up my decades long loyalty to Honda a long time ago.
I guess they figured some extra spice in the curry roux would make up for the perceived lack of spice in the car.
But I don’t think it was intended for the “enthusiast” market as it is. There’s not enough of them with enough money to make it worth Honda’s while.