With the revival of the Prelude, you’d be forgiven for getting your hopes up for the return of more legendary Honda nameplates. Say, something like the S2000. Sadly, though, it doesn’t sound like one is coming anytime soon.
Car Throttle had the chance to sit down with Tomoyuki Yamagami, the engineering lead for the Prelude. We asked if the return of the coupe could lead to more revivals, but any suggestions of a new S2000 in the imminent future were quickly shot down.
Yamagami-san said: “We will probably not sit together and think and consider now ‘Let’s have a revival model of the S2000. How should that look like?’”. All hope is not lost, though, adding “We can’t say it will happen, but we can’t say it won’t happen”.
Quell any hopes of a new S2000 anytime soon
Similarly, it’s unlikely a flurry of other models are returning either. Yamagami-san added: “If you really try to copy and revive an existing heritage, this is something that will probably not really work out. The era has changed, the customer expectations and desires have changed”
Interestingly, the Prelude name wasn’t originally set for a return from the outset, rather being applied to an already in-development hybrid coupe. Yamagami-san told us: “This model was not meant to be a Prelude from the start. [Honda] had a completely different mission of developing a sports coupe with the latest technology.
The Prelude wasn’t planned as one from the outset
“It was recognised during development that all these attributes they had been following were in line with the heritage of the Prelude. So we, later on, decided we might even call it the Prelude because it’s so similar.”
While it may come as a disappointment that we’re not likely to see a new Honda S2000, NSX or even a Del Sol anytime soon, maybe we can at least be grateful those names won’t be applied to SUVs or EVs anytime soon. Maybe Ford should have taken note with the upcoming Capri…
