These are some of the most unique, and heavily modified Honda Preludes in the world. All of these cars are unique in their own way and deserve their place on this list. Enjoy.

640HP Time Attack Honda Prelude Feat. Boeing-747

This magnificent piece of engineering is all built around its Honda H22 engine, pushing 640 hp. But it wasn’t always like this.

Cory bought the car in 2003 and frequently used it for canyon driving. He fell in love with the way it handled but felt the urge to make it faster.

A lot of people would question the idea of adding an enormous turbo and pushing over 600 hp in a front-wheel-drive (FWD) car used for canyon driving. And generally, it is likely a horrible idea, since too much power in a FWD car means a lot of understeer, and understeer when driving through a canyon is the last thing you’d want. But Cory did not just add a bunch of power, he put as much effort into the handling, suspension, tires, brakes, and aero. He built a Time-Attack Prelude.

This Prelude is basically fused together with an enormous diffuser and completely stripped-out interior. There are canards as long as the eyes can see fitted to its wide-body kit and top it off the largest spoiler you’ve ever witnessed being fitted to a Honda Prelude. And still, with everything done it is still undoubtedly a Prelude because even though the modification is extreme, it is somehow done elegantly.

This Honda Prelude is not only modified with car parts but plane parts as well. And it’s not just for looks, it works too! Behind the front wheels is a carbon honeycomb typically found on 747s and helps with airflow through the wheel well. And that is the secret of this car, every modification is done for a purpose.

Drifting Honda Prelude – JDM Old School Drifting

The Prelude is Honda’s front-wheel-drive sports coupé and is most commonly known for its VTEC engine and great handling. But a few people, and more specifically a Polish guy named Peuek Szorstki figured he would build something different. A rear-wheel-drive Honda Prelude with only one thing in mind, drifting.

This car is not the fastest, it does not have the best handling, and it won’t win any car shows. But that doesn’t matter, because it can drift.

Now usually drift cars tend to have heaps of horsepower, this particular Prelude doesn’t. This owner shares the old-school drifting wisdom of having a lightweight chassis over horsepower. Thus, this RWD Prelude makes just over 200 hp. But don’t let that fool you, the guy got some good skill, and trust me, this car can drift.

What comes as a surprise considering this is a Honda, is that this car doesn’t have a VTEC engine. In fact, this car doesn’t even have a Japanese engine. This car has a turbo-converted Mercedes-Benz M111 I-4 engine, but it sounds pretty good and clearly does the job.

This is a good-looking car. It has the right stance, has a freaking twin-exhaust going out the hood, and when Peuek throws it sideways you kind of wished that every Prelude was rear-wheel drive because it does look darn natural.

If money, space, and time weren’t an issue, I’d probably have a RWD Honda Prelude.

400HP Street Prelude – Built, Not Bought

One of our favorites, this Prelude combines speed, design, and handling. This car was solely built to be used on the streets, and the owner Art Castrillo wanted to keep dailying the car while still tastefully modifying it.

The engine bay on this Prelude is quite frankly, fabulous. The term “clean” gets thrown around in the car community a lot, but this is the next level. What you’ll be faced with is the JDM H23A Blue Top fitted to a custom-made turbo-manifold, which when you see it is just glorious. In order to achieve some higher numbers, a Comp 5858 Turbo is added.

The engine modification results in a modest 400 hp. In order to keep the car balanced and usable as a road car, the owner has done a lot of upgrades to the suspension. Adding 32-adjustable Reaction coil overs, all the bushings have been replaced with Polyurethane bushings, and all the control- and -toe arms have also been upgraded.

Art Castrillo, the owner of this Prelude has a unique look at modifying a car. If your plan is to modify a vehicle never go out and buy the most complicated model, or trim level. Reserve yourself for a basic model, keep it simple. The idea is that you’ll be able to sculpt the car into what you want with as little struggle as possible. The basic models usually don’t have as advanced suspension, and engine options and can thus be modified very easily. And if you break something it were likely to be changed anyway so you can just throw it in the trash without having to worry about ruining an expensive part.

I’d say for most JDM owners this is what it’s all about. Putting your own design and flavor on the car, making it reflect you as a car owner, and not what the other “car people’s” idea of what a great car should be like. This owner did not go looking on the internet for what to do with the car. He simply did to it what he wanted out of the car.

1000HP Drag Race Prelude – The Cheapest Horsepower Per Dollar

This car is ridiculous in many ways. First of all, it is built for one purpose only – to humiliate any competition on the dragstrip. And how does it do that? Well, its fully built VTEC H-motor pushes just right over 1,000 hp!

For having 1,000 hp this car is very simple. It has a stripped interior, a dogleg gearbox, and some aftermarket drag-wheels, and that’s it.

And how much do you have to pay to get that? Well, not a lot as it would seem. This Prelude was purchased by the YouTuber BoostedBoiz and they paid just $5,000. That’s Five bucks per horsepower, really, who wouldn’t take that deal. I know for sure I would.

So, for $5,000 these guys got one of the fastest Preludes in the world which consistently pull 9 seconds quarter miles at 150+ mph. In fact, on their second track day, they were just 0.3 seconds shy of the Honda Prelude world record at a 9.6-second quarter mile. Show me another car that can do the same for five grand. Obviously, it had some minor issues which needed to be resolved such as fixing the transmission, but still, five grand for a running 1,000 hp Prelude sounds like a great deal to me.

The Honda Prelude – Why Are There So Few Modified Examples?

When it comes to modifying Honda’s, the Accord and Civic are the king and queen, but the Prelude very rarely gets modified beyond adding a pair of coil overs and some aftermarket wheels. One can wonder why that is, since the Civic and Accord which share many components with the Prelude and are so often heavily modified.

A large factor for there being so few Honda Preludes is the number of sales. Let’s take the model year 2000 as an example. Honda manufactured about 20,000 Preludes, and half of them went to North America. That is not a large number, but it gets even smaller when put in comparison to the Accord which sold about 500,000 examples in North America, and about 350,000 for the Honda Civic.

When you could have a Civic or Accord for a few hundred bucks, spending maybe a grand or two on a Prelude suddenly doesn’t seem to be as great of a deal, considering they are very similar.