I drove Honda's new Prelude. It may matter more to Honda than to buyers.

• Honda revived the Prelude as a roughly $44,000 hybrid coupe after 25 years.
• I drove the car for a week. It's fun and spunky — but who is going to buy this?
• Limited supply suggests Honda may see it more as a halo car than a volume seller.

It's been a quarter century since Honda had a new Prelude arriving at dealerships.

The coupe — which was popular in the 1990s with enthusiasts who liked to tinker with tuner cars — was discontinued in 2001.

So, I wouldn't blame you if you don't recognize the nameplate. I also wouldn't blame you if you do remember it and find Honda's new approach to the beloved car a little surprising.

Unlike the Prelude of yesteryear, the new one is certainly not cheap. My Boost Blue tester has a sticker price of $43,650, including destination. Optional summer tires pushed the suggested price to $44,850.

On paper, this car makes almost no sense. Who exactly is the buyer? Prelude purists may bristle at the hybrid powertrain and price. Young shoppers looking for an affordable coupe have cheaper options. Drivers chasing outright performance can get substantially more power elsewhere.

After 400 miles, I started to think the Prelude makes more sense for Honda than it does for any one obvious customer.

The Prelude is fun — just not in the obvious way

Honda calls the new version a sporty grand tourer.

It's aiming for a niche part of the US market: It's comfortable and efficient enough for long drives, while maintaining a visual appeal that's very different from the vehicular blobs filling today's grocery store parking lot.

I say it nails the aesthetics. My Boost Blue tester was almost aggressively photogenic, with bulging wheel arches and a sloping roofline that gave it a poor man's Porsche vibe. As I drove slowly past a construction site in Brooklyn, a worker asked me to lower my window.

"Sweet car!" he said.

As I drove away, I heard him yell to a coworker: "Damn, that's a Honda?"

Underneath its curvy coupe body sits Honda's deeply engineered two-motor hybrid system, good for 200 horsepower and an EPA-estimated 44 mpg combined. It also borrows suspension, steering, and Brembo brake hardware from the Civic Type R and luxury interior elements from its high-end luxury brand, Acura.

It's not particularly fast. That trade-off became obvious pretty quickly.

The Prelude's getup is plenty for merging onto the highway, and it actually felt sprightlier once moving at speed. But its immediate shove is nowhere near what I've felt in similarly priced performance cars — or some EVs, like the Tesla Model 3.

What it lacks in outright speed, though, it makes up for elsewhere.

The car stays impressively flat through bends, the steering feels direct, and the Brembos are grabby enough to remind you that Honda raided the fun-loving Type R's parts bin.

Good news, too, for drivers mourning the death of manuals: Honda's new S+ Shift system does a surprisingly convincing impersonation of a traditional transmission. There aren't actually eight gears, but steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters, simulated rev-matched downshifts, and surprisingly natural engine sounds add some fun driving nostalgia theater.

More useful was the fuel economy. I averaged 43.5 mpg on my mostly highway drive, almost exactly matching Honda's 44-mpg combined estimate.

Its backseat, however, is nearly useless.

The second row is difficult to get into because of the sloping roofline, has virtually no headroom, and will only fit riders with calves as thick as a sheet of paper.

Honda may not need many people to buy one

Is this car a fit for most American buyers? Not really.

It's effectively an expensive two-seater with a Honda badge and a luxury interior. On paper, it doesn't really stack up against its competition: the Ford Mustang is more powerful, the Mazda MX-5 Miata is sportier, and the Toyota GR-86 is nearly $10,000 cheaper.

That's a particularly small cubbyhole of a market for the Prelude.

Honda may not need the Prelude to become a volume seller. Dealers I've spoken with said supply is limited, and one told me there's already a waitlist to get one onto the lot. Another dealer said the Prelude could draw curious shoppers into the showroom — even if many ultimately leave in something like the ever-popular CR-V.

So maybe there's a better question surrounding this car: Is the Honda Prelude attention-grabbing?

The construction worker clearly thought so.