Junkyard Find: 1981 Honda Prelude
Remember how small the early Preludes were? It had been quite some time since I last saw one of these cars, so I was a bit startled by the diminutive dimensions of this example in a California self-serve yard.
The first-gen Prelude was smaller and much slower than the versions that followed later in the 1980s; the ’81 came with the same 72-horsepower engine as the Accord. Since the Prelude weighed just 2,130 pounds, 72 horses wasn’t as cement-mixer-slow as you might expect… but you had to plan ahead when attempting to pass on a two-lane blacktop road.
One of the best things about 80s Japanese cars was the unapologetically 1890-French-cathouse-grade red interiors you could get. This car had plenty of goofy style, something that seems to have been banished from the entire Honda line by about 1994.
I was tempted to buy this clock, but I passed because I didn’t have any means of testing it. I’ve learned that 99 and several more nines percent of mechanical-digital car clocks, even Japanese ones, don’t work.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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My brother gave my his then girlfriends, I think 81 hatch one of these. I think he wanted me to store it for him if he ever wanted it, but I sold it for $800. That was about ten years ago. I did like how tiny the car was. He could not figure out why it kept dying on acceleratrion. I found a small pair of vice grips on the fuel line near the tank. Took em off and it ran great. Have no idea why they were there.
"One of the best things about 80s Japanese cars was the unapologetically 1890-French-cathouse-grade red interiors you could get. This car had plenty of goofy style, something that seems to have been banished from the entire Honda line by about 1994." Nope, it came back in the S2000: http://carphotos.cardomain.com/ride_images/1/1247/3141/3116570018_large.jpg Blech. I know a lot of people love them, but it's not too much REEEEED for me. Not as bad as the blue one, though.