Products

In today’s era of milquetoast crossovers and gargantuan SUVs, we’ll applaud any automaker which chooses to bring to market a slick two-door coupe aimed at the hearts of enthusiasts who remember the ‘80s and ‘90s with fondness (if with more than a tinge of rose-colored glasses).

Of course, some of those gearheads are a tough audience - especially when presented with a nameplate dear to their stone-cold hearts. It’s been an age since buyers could stroll into a Honda dealership and drive away with a new Prelude. Was it the right decision for Honda to put the name on the back of this car?

We can tell you one thing: that report out of Japan, the one from a random YouTube channel which pegged this new Prelude’s 0-60 mph time at more than 9 seconds, is absolute rubbish.

Powering the 2026 Honda Prelude is a take on what’s found in the Civic Hybrid, which is to say a 2.0-liter four-banger tag teaming a two-motor hybrid system to produce 200 horsepower and 232 lb-ft of torque. Alert readers will already know those stats. What they may not know is that the random report from Japan mentioned above seems to have gotten everyone’s knickers in a knot for nothing.

For the 2024 model year, the Ford Ranger was redesigned with plenty of improvements all around. Ford also added the Raptor badge and more capability to its mid-size truck. The Ranger Raptor can go head-to-head with other rock crawlers and baja racers. TTAC Creator Connie Peters, an automotive journalist based in Vancouver, explores the Ranger Raptor in her latest video.

What sets the Raptor apart from other Rangers is larger all-terrain tires, underbody protection with skid-plates, front and rear locking differentials, increased ground clearance, and a specially tuned suspension and steering rack.

The twin-turbo V6 is more powerful as well, making 405 horsepower and 430 lb-ft of torque mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission and offers full-time four-wheel drive. When in Baja mode, the Ranger Raptor is ready for high speed off-pavement driving action.

Connie Peters is an automotive video creator and journalist covering all types of cars and trucks for the past 10 years in suburban Vancouver. You can watch all of her videos on her YouTube channel.

A transcript, summarized via AI and edited by a staffer, is below.

The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.

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On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we have actually used or purchased with our own meagre income. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories.

Despite all the boomer bleatings that everyone needs to unplug and pretend they’re in the Stone Age during road trips or camping journeys, there remains a real need to stay connected and use a few electronic devices during such adventures. Addressing electricity requirements can be tricky, which is why power inverters exist.

Here's the transaxle breaking, courtesy of friend of TTAC Bozi Tatarevic. This was repaired and the car did finish.

Autumn is here in full swing and temperatures are starting to drop. That means it’s time to start thinking about winter tires. The good news is that eBay has some incredible deals on winter tires, so you can save money while also making your vehicle safer to drive this winter.

To address the demand for electrons, carmakers have been busy stuffing their machines with USB ports and 120V “household” outlets. Not every car gets it right, with some offering up only a single USB port to placate the yowling masses or placing the outlet in a wholly inconvenient location.

You’ve seen plenty of vehicles with completely nuked dashboards in Murilee’s Junkyard Find series. After a lifetime of baking in the sun, these cars end up with cratered and cracked interiors that resemble the moon’s surface. It’s not pretty.

Yes, yes – we’ve talked about this subject and the related topic of ceramic coatings in the past. We promise we’re not repeating ourselves, at least not until we’re safely ensconced in the Old Age Home for Recovering Gearheads. We’ll be in the wing where they keep folks who had an odd affinity for terrible ’90s GM cars, like the Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo.

Wiper blades are the Rodney Dangerfield of automotive parts. Generally ignored and routinely forgotten, they’re a rarely thought of component … until they wear out or fall apart. Then they’re the subject of foul language and rude epithets as they give up the ghost, reduced to tattered strips of rubber serving only to smear bugs across the windshield.

There’s a marked difference between having to wash a car and wanting to wash a car. The former is a chore that is assigned to sullen teens in the wash bays of countless car dealers across the nation. The latter is a task enjoyed by gearheads on a Sunday afternoon.

Every single gearhead reading this enjoys a clean car. Whether we take the time to actually remove life’s various and sundry detritus, well, that’s a different story. We all know people whose engine compartments are tidier than their passenger compartments.

It’s a safe bet that most DIYers are grateful to the wrenching deities for the democratization of LED illumination – especially when talking about work lights. Your author used to toil under cars and in tight spaces with incandescent work lights that heated themselves to approximately the surface of the sun, as I’m sure you all did as well.

Far beyond the reaches of old-school car bras and hood protectors are these clear paint protection films. Targeted at drivers who give a damn about their car’s paintwork, these options are dandy ways to keep a vehicle’s finish in good shape while not hiding anything under a leather protector.

We’ve covered mechanic’s sets in the past but, in this updated post, we are going to focus on dedicated socket sets. That means no sets with piece-count padders like Allen keys in an obscure size or that one tool that only serves to remove the Färhfvingenator on your clapped-out Volkswagen.

If you’re doing any sort of DIY work that requires the removal and installation of nuts and bolts, a torque wrench is a great tool to have on hand. This is doubly true if you have a propensity for swapping the wheels and tires of your vehicle. Properly torquing those lug nuts is critical to avoid a potentially calamitous situation.