2025 isn't exactly a great year for sedans across the board, but that's especially the case in the Acura lineup. Honda's luxury arm has wound down the TLX, leaving the Integra—which is technically a five-door hatchback—as the sole traditional passenger car in a lineup stuffed with SUVs. The Honda division's U.S. lineup is a little richer, offering two sedans and a hatch, but that's contrasted against seven combined crossovers, vans, and pickups.
"SUVs are quite popular, everywhere in the world, right?. The United States, or China, or Japan, or India. However, [Toshihiro Mibe], our president—my boss—what he declared when he got the presidency four years ago, at the time, what he said was 'I want to have a coupe, a sports model.' So, he ordered our R&D to develop the Prelude," Honda director, senior managing executive officer Katsushi Inoue says.
"We still believe that SUVs are important for the mainstream business, however... in order to differentiate from other companies, we need to do that kind of thing: a production sporty body."
"We never forget that we want to do sporty cars," he says. "The shape might be changed from time to time, right? Coupe, sedan... but we believe that we need to maintain that kind of body shape. The SUV is not everything."
That's gratifying to hear for enthusiasts, as the company's freshly revealed RSX is taking the name of a sports coupe and using it on a new electric crossover—and while it's still technically a prototype, the changes between now and its production entry late next year certainly will not include altering it back into a two-door passenger car.
"It's not an RSX like the original RSX. It's really a continuation, from a product standpoint, of where we're taking the Acura lineup," American Honda Motor Company vice president of auto sales Lance Woelfer says. "But it is a different vehicle than the original RSX, but i think [the name] really carries and represents the new model.
Honda still sees electrification as the inevitable endpoint of the automobile's progress, even if the executives gathered to speak at Acura's roundtable interview during Monterey Car Week agreed that the timeline had been shifted back further than the company originally planned. While the RSX and its closely related Honda 0-Series models are still on track to arrive next year, other EVs may have to wait or be changed—for example, the previously discussed electric successor to the NSX.
"We have to think that over once again," Inoue says. But regardless of what form it takes, he suggests you can count on the NSX, or something like it, to return: "We understand that we need to have that kind of model as our icon."
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