‘Honda Could Do This’: Prelude Type R Build Realizes the Coupe Everyone Wants

The second the enthusiast world learned how much power the sixth-gen Honda Prelude was going to have, there was a problem. Of course, the Prelude was never the most raucous sports coupe in the world historically, nor was that its mission. But the Civic Hybrid’s carry-over two-motor powertrain just didn’t meet the moment on paper. In practice, well—it all depends on what you’re looking for. The good people at parts-shop-slash-YouTube-channel Throtl, however, wanted a Prelude Type R, so that’s exactly what they built.

The guiding question behind Throtl and Idemitsu’s Prelude Type R build, on display at SEMA in Las Vegas as you read this, was simple: “If Honda were to build the Prelude Type R, what would it look like?” Throtl’s co-founder Evan Beckerman told me in an interview. In trying to realize this vision, he and his crew didn’t cobble together a random assortment of parts to assemble a really fast Prelude. They kept it in the family, and, more specifically, carried over as much of the FL5 Civic Type R as possible.

Of course that included the Civic Type R’s K20C1 turbo-four and six-speed transmission—that’s the whole point—but it also included the sports sedan’s front and rear bumpers, adapted to fit the Prelude perfectly. Throtl worked with Seibon to effectively graft the CTR’s hood scoop onto the Prelude’s hood and render that all as one piece, in carbon fiber. The Civic’s signature triple-exit exhaust is there, as is its rear wing, with mounts slid inward to sit on the hatch itself so the wing doesn’t keep it from opening.

Throtl

Throtl didn’t re-use as much of the Civic as possible merely for aesthetic or philosophical reasons, either; it made the job cleaner, especially when it came to electronic aspects like the instrument cluster. “The entire car thinks it’s an FL5—so you plug in the OBD2 reader, it thinks it’s a Civic Type R,” Beckerman said.

“The cool thing is, some of the stuff was just remarkably close. You know, required less fabrication than we had even thought,” Beckerman said. “I think Honda could do this for not that much effort, but I don’t know politically if they’ll ever do it because it would upset the Civic Type R flagship.”

Throtl

It makes sense, though, that a coupe built on the Civic platform, with the Civic Hybrid’s powertrain and already packing the Type R’s suspension and brakes, would accommodate the rest of the recipe well. In a way, this project required the Throtl crew to reverse engineer the Civic Type R. For example, when they fit the Type R’s intercooler behind the stock Prelude front bumper, it was immediately clear there wasn’t going to be enough airflow to feed it. The simplest and most elegant solution was to adapt the FL5’s bumper. And, in following that process, you begin to understand why Honda designed the car as it did.

“We were a little surprised with how much we could make work, it just required literally stripping the FL5 to nothing. I mean, we transferred over even the carpet,” Beckerman said. “Civic Type R shifter, the whole center console. We were able to make almost every single thing work, which is just really cool.”

Beckerman called out fabricating the exhaust and wiring as the most trouble but “mechanically, it was pretty straightforward.” In the cabin, Throtl re-trimmed the door panels in red Alcantara and the rear seats in a matching shade—a neat touch, considering that even in the Civic Type R, the bench doesn’t match the thrones.

I was curious if it was ever a thought—or even possible—for the builders to attempt to enhance the new Prelude’s performance while keeping in line with its electrified ethos. Beckerman said that he and the team believed the enthusiast community would “rejoice” at the idea of pulling all that out of the Prelude, but also that aftermarket attempts to modify the Prelude’s inline-four have been largely unsuccessful.

Throtl

That’s the trouble with these complex, multi-energy powertrains, controlled by code and functionally locked down. The only choice, really, for Throtl to remake a Prelude into a machine deserving of the Type R badge was to bring over the FL5’s heart and soul. They’ve gone that length, and then some. I did have to point out to Beckerman that he had the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and down-make the donor CTR into a Civic Hybrid on the other side, but I don’t anticipate that’ll be the team’s next project.

You can watch the whole build journey over at Throtl’s YouTube channel.

Throtl

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