The Tesla Cybercab, aka Robotaxi, is a driverless personal transportation pod resembling a car. With no steering wheel and no pedals, I’m sure it’ll feel freaky to ride in even if you’re used to the marvels of modern automotive automation. But the differences between Cybercab and most regular cars go beyond what you can see from the seats—the brake system is fundamentally different from almost everything else on the road.

As for whether or not these things will actually be on the road en masse remains to be seen—the NHTSA has already opened an investigation into how Tesla certified these for public use. More on that later.

As for the interesting stopping tech, well, a typical automotive braking setup is hydraulic, relying on long hoses full of fluid to control the movement of the pads. When you push your brake pedal, a little piston is pumped, pushing sealed fluid out to the calipers, which then pinch spinning rotors. The Cybercab has calipers and rotors—but no master cylinder or brake lines. It uses a completely electric brake-by-wire system, which is still (almost) unheard of in 2026.

Some cars use electronic brake controls to operate a hydraulic system (like Lexus’ electro-hydraulic brake design), and Tesla isn’t even the very first to have no brake fluid at all in a production vehicle (the Chery Exeed EX7 claimed that title earlier this year).

That’s an important distinction: Electro-hydraulic (EHB) braking, like Lexus uses, has been in production vehicles for many years. Electro-mechanical braking (EMB)—no fluid at all—is newer and more novel.

The way this works is, instead of a master cylinder and plumbing and a pedal, there’s a little electronically controlled actuator putting braking force on the rotors, individually, at each corner.

Kyle Conner from the Out of Spec Reviews EV-focused YouTube channel was at the vehicle’s reveal party and shared this little clip of a partially assembled Cybercab, showing exactly what we’re talking about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kyle Conner (@virtualkyle)

Old heads in various comment sections are calling this a little scary, but even as a Luddite myself, I think brake-by-wire here actually makes a lot of sense. The advantages are significant—I’m sure production costs were slashed (which was probably Tesla’s main motivation to employ such a system)—but it also allows for disparate levels of force to be applied to each wheel individually, which could aid in traction. As an EV, the Cybercab will likely do most of its self-slowing with regenerative braking. And when it does need mechanical brakes, it won’t let them get all that hot—it’s a city cab, not a sports car.

The Cybercab is really a marvel of low-cost construction, using as few and as light parts as possible. The exterior body panels are literally injection-molded polyurethane. It’s basically a giant PowerWheels car.

Tesla seems to have front-loaded the expense of making this thing (figuring out how to make the thing work with as few parts as possible), and now is banking on manufacturing and maintaining a ton of them for very little money. Seems like a logical model for cabs to me, though I still think it’s strange they only have two seats. (Though most cab rides reportedly are for two or fewer people, so there’s empirical reasoning behind that decision, too.)

The specific supplier of the Cybercab’s brake system has not been officially cited yet, but a critical mass of critics seem to be agreeing that it’s likely Brembo’s Sensify system.

I suspect we’ll see this in other vehicles in the near future, too. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to learning more about the Cybercab—it’s kind of aesthetically cute and conceptually quite fascinating. Kyle Conner described it as looking like it’s built for long-term use in his video clip; it looks more to me like it’s designed to be disposable, like a phone, and similarly built so cheaply that whole-vehicle replacement would be a trivial expense.

Wall Street doesn’t seem quite as enamored with it as the first YouTubers to see it, though. Tesla’s stock is down as “underwhelming Cybercab launch draws US probe.” Oh, yeah, the vehicle is already under investigation to “examine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues.”

Got any Cybercab insider knowledge? Tell me about it! I’m andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post Tesla Cybercab Isn’t Just Missing a Steering Wheel. It Doesn’t Even Have Brake Lines appeared first on The Drive.

The new Mitsubishi Pajero dropped this week; Americans know this model as the Montero. And while it left our market without ceremony 20 years ago, the three-row off-roader remained popular overseas as a less-expensive Toyota Land Cruiser alternative. In Australia, for example, the vehicle’s new design is a big deal. And clearly, Mitsubishi is serious about making this thing outback-worthy. Get a load of the optional steel bumper from the factory accessory catalog.

It’s kind of funny seeing a big, battering-ram bumper on a modern SUV design, isn’t it? Looks like something you’d slap on at Los Santos Customs in GTA V. Mitsubishi hasn’t released the full options list yet, but in that one teaser picture we can clearly see a real kangaroo-killing bumper, snorkel, and skid plate. The description is just: “Make the All-New Pajero uniquely yours with a wide range of Mitsubishi Genuine Accessories. Designed for Australian conditions and developed specifically for Pajero, each accessory delivers seamless integration, exceptional quality and confidence on every journey.”

This would be consistent with what Mitsu Australia offers on the Pajero Sport. Toyota sells something similar for the 300 Series Land Cruiser in the Land Down Under, too. (And of course, the mighty 70 Series is still sold there).

So, yeah, while those look like aftermarket bumpers (and may indeed be made by ARB or another bumper brand that also sells direct to consumers) they’re OEM parts you can get from the factory. And even though they’re slightly odd-looking on modern vehicles, I do think they’re pretty darn cool.

The advent of front vehicle sensors and higher standards for pedestrian safety has largely removed such options from American vehicles, but in kangaroo country, they’re still a necessity.

And it’s not because Australia is a lawless land. Quite the opposite, in fact—speed enforcement is much stricter there than it is here. The legal driving-intoxication limit is lower. Firearms are much more tightly regulated. A driver’s license is harder to get and puts much greater restrictions on beginner drivers than US ones do.

No, the proliferation of seriously heavy-duty truck bumpers is not an “Aussies can do whatever they want” thing. It simply makes more sense there. Australia is about the same size as the contiguous United States, but with about 10% of the population. Meanwhile, the density of animals on the road is much higher.

I lived in Australia circa 2011 as an off-road tour guide, and crisscrossed the entire nation east/west, north/south, and a few diagonals, about a dozen times. We’d run 17-day trips where we’d see our last traffic light on the first day and not see another until the last. Once you get away from the coast, it’s animal country. Kangaroos ranging in size from “small dog” to “could beat up Jason Momoa,” plus emus, are an absolute menace to vehicles. As an animal lover, I share this with no pride, but I lost count of how many ‘roos I killed—in some areas of the outback, they simply bounce off your bumper like bugs while you blaze down a dark highway.

It can become impractical to pull over and inspect your vehicle after every kangaroo strike—there’s probably a Slim Dusty song about that (look him up if you want to experience a little piece of Australia for yourself now).

All this to say, Australia’s one place where prioritizing animal defense over pedestrian safety actually makes sense objectively.

As for me, the kangaroos got their revenge. I collided with a particularly dumb one while riding a Yamaha TTR250 motorcycle, and the main souvenir I took home from the trip was a slightly bent skeleton—left arm has ridden about an inch lower than my right ever since. I also had to drive across the Simpson Desert (three days) with a cracked collarbone and a misaligned acromioclavicular joint. But that’s a story for another time.

Got any Australian outback driving stories? Hit me up at andrew.collins@thedrive.com

The post In America, a Bull Bar Is a Look. In Australia, It’s Just Another Factory Option appeared first on The Drive.

The REI Labor Day sale, running now through September 7, is a great opportunity to save serious money on big-ticket car and camping accessories. High-quality bike racks are not cheap, so 20% off can mean more than a couple hundred bucks. Check out the best buys right here.

I tested Yakima’s StepUp Swing trailer-hitch bike rack this summer and absolutely loved it. Solid build quality, serious convenience—it’s so nice to be able to move bikes out of the way of my side-opening rear door without removing them. Anyway, that’s normally about $1,000 is now down to $800. There are plenty of options at lower prices, too, if you can skip the swing function.

Bike Rack Deals

See It

And here are some more automotive adventure-adjacent items you might want to score a deal on.

Travel Gear + Luggage Deals

See It

Camping Gear Deals

See It

Watersport Deals

See It

And here’s the rest of the rundown on Labor Day sale discounts, directly from REI:

Selected Offers:

• 25% off selected REI Co-op Brand clothing and gear
• 25% off all Darn Tough socks
• 20% off all Thule and Yakima racks, roof boxes and accessories
• 25% off selected Altra footwear
• 25% off all KEEN footwear
• 25% off selected Osprey packs and duffels
• 25% off all Sea to Summit products
• Up to 50% off clearance deals

REI Outlet Flash Deals:

• August 31-September 1: Save up to 60% off select REI Outlet items
• September 3-September 4: Save up to 60% off select REI Outlet items

REI Co-op Members enjoy even more benefits during the Labor Day Sale:

• Extra 20% off one REI Outlet item
• Extra 25% off installation services of new bike parts or accessories with purchase of product

REI Co-op Members can find added value throughout the event with member-only offers on REI Outlet and bike shop services. Anyone can join the co-op as a lifetime member for a one-time fee of $30, giving access to a range of benefits, including an annual Co-op Member Reward of 10% back on eligible purchases, discounts on shop services and experiences, special access to curated products and more. 

The post Save Hundreds: Yakima and Thule Car Racks Are 20% Off for REI’s Labor Day Sale appeared first on The Drive.

The Lexus RX RR is a near-future high-performance SUV slated to stand up to rivals like the BMW X5 M and Mercedes-AMG GLE 63. Rumor has it, it’ll even have “Morizo” nomenclature like the sporty Lexus LBX sold overseas. For now, we can confirm one thing about the enhanced RX: It’s going to look sick.

A semi-camo’d prototype was spied in Europe wearing fierce fender flares and a pretty mean-looking set of exhaust outlets. The wheels and tires have a really aggressive low-offset fitment, and you can see red Brembo brake calipers clearly in this album of spy shots. Zooming in on the images, it looks like we can spot 21-inch wheels, staggered Michelin Pilot Sport 4 SUV tires (265s front, 295s rear), cross-drilled and slotted rotors, and front intakes that may house intercoolers.

While no official performance specs have been shared yet, reports have speculated that this super-SUV variant of the RX could have a 600-horsepower hybrid powertrain. While some rivals are running big engines, word has it that Lexus is going with a 2.0-liter turbo four paired with two electric motors.

The Lexus RX, physically, is kind of an in-betweener. It’s considered a rival to the “mid-size” X5 and GLE, but is a bit smaller. That may translate to a performance advantage for the platform, as it’s upgraded for this special variant. The vehicle certainly looks right with a low stance and wide track. The RX is, historically, not a car many people would call “cool.” I think this version is on the right track to change that.

“Morizo” is, of course, Akio Toyoda’s racing pseudonym. The name’s been bestowed on some of Toyota’s hottest machines in the recent past, like the super-spec version of the GR Corolla.

I expect we’ll see this on dealer lots in calendar-year 2028, but of course the final form will be revealed sooner.

Got any insider info on the upcoming Lexus RX RR? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com!

The post Lexus RX Is About To Get a Lot Less Boring appeared first on The Drive.

REO is a “coming soon” car brand, promising something that commenters are constantly clamoring for: A simple, cheap, gasoline-powered pickup truck. The pitch is exciting: $21,500 list price, no spyware, focused on affordability and easy maintenance. But the company has also teased one luxury feature worth getting excited about—a crotch vent.

Crotch vents, sometimes more crassly called “ball chillers,” used to be fairly common. Many older cars have A/C vents below the steering column, firing cool air at the driver’s lower torso and between their thighs. In sweaty places like the American South, or these days, New York in summer, a crotch-cooling vent can really make car rides considerably more comfortable.

I’m still pretty skeptical about REO’s viability as a business long-term, but they’re saying all the right things to get low-cost truck enthusiasts excited. And this is definitely one of those things.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by REO Industries (@drivereo)

REO Industries Founder and CEO Zach De Bernardi is a Texas real estate guy trying to fill the market gap that’s basically only being served by used last-gen Ford Rangers. The logline is basically “The affordable American truck—gas, mechanical, body-on-frame. Engineered to run 500,000 miles. Built in Texas, sold direct.”

The Runabout, as it’s going to be called, racked up thousands of early reservations. But from where I’m sitting, REO is still a long way from anything resembling mass marketing. Building a car in compliance with modern safety standards that’s also as cheap and simple as something from the ’90s won’t be easy—but I’m glad at least one company thinks it might not be impossible.

Another enticing proposition, besides a low list price and a crotch-chilling vent, is an open-source nature—REO, so far, positioning itself as extremely right-to-repair friendly, going so far as to be basically open-source and fixable or modifiable by almost anyone.

I wish these guys luck. I’m skeptical of their odds of success. But on paper, REO is presenting what many people I know would consider the perfect truck. We’ll be watching their progress with a lot of interest.

Got any REO insights or opinions? Hit me up at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post Finally: A New Car With Crotch Vents appeared first on The Drive.

Whether you’ve got lingering summer projects to finish or you’re just looking to score a great tool deal, Labor Day is the perfect time to pounce on great discounts from The Home Depot. It’s running some of its best buy-tool-get-battery deals on Milwaukee, special buy pricing on Ryobi, over half off Rigid, and sweet accessory deals to stay outfitted as the seasons get ready to change.

Here’s a quick roundup of all the best buys we’re clocking from this year’s Labor Day promo blitz from The Home Depot.

Milwaukee: Free Tools and Batteries

These “buy one, get one free item” deals are the best way to score batteries. But if you already have power, you can get more tools too.

See It

Pressure Washers: Up to 24% Off (Ryobi, DeWalt, John Deere, and Simpson)

Brand-name pressure washers at a range of power and price points are discounted this week.

See It

Generators (Generac, Ryobi, and More): Save up to 20%

Storm season is coming—be ready!

See It

Lawn Mowers: 30% off the Ultimate Makita Grass-Cutting Combo

There are a bunch of mower deals, but this Makita buy is red-hot. You get 30% off a 36V walk-behind, then you get a $369 string trimmer for free!

See It

Ryobi Deals: Some Tools Down to 60% Off

Ryobi is running Special Buy pricing on a huge range of tools, some of which is less than half price.

See It

DeWalt Deals: Free Batteries Plus Discounts

Some DeWalt tools are discounted, others come with free batteries. You can’t lose.

See It

Rigid: Half off an Impact Wrench and More

This half-inch high-torque impact wrench, with a carry case, battery, and charger, is a steal of a deal at $250 (list is $557).

See It

Power Tool Accessories: Stack Discounts

You’re going to need bits and drivers to make all those tools useful, right? Check out all the accessory savings here.

See It

The Home Depot’s Labor Day savings promotion runs from August 27 to September 9 for 2026. Don’t forget to check out The Home Depot’s Labor Day deal master list if you want to squeeze every bargain you can out of this year’s holiday pricing. Prices and promos were accurate at the time of publication, but may change. So click early and click often!

The post Half-Off Tools, Free Batteries, and More Labor Day Saving at The Home Depot To Finish Off Your Last Summer Projects appeared first on The Drive.

News from the front lines of the never-ending war between cars and rodents: Marmots are a menace (in general, apparently) and are tragically addicted to antifreeze. People who park in marmot country have taken to making giant tarp diapers for their cars to keep the critters from chewing into coolant lines. It is an unfortunate situation all around, but it makes for a pretty funny visual.

People driving around the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks areas are urged to pack giant tarps to park on, which they’re then folding up and holding in place to create a defense shield of tarpaulin between their engines and the animals.

This WSJ video and article about marmots “terrorizing California hikers and stealing their shoes” describes an escalating conflict between marmots and the humans who come visit their habitats. It’s making the rounds because the idea of a creature that looks like the Buc-ee’s mascot with “yellow-bellied” in its name being “dangerous” is silly, and the image of cars wrapped bottom-up like ballpark hot dogs is weird.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Wall Street Journal (@wsj)

The WSJ story just came out, but this is not a new phenomenon—the National Park Service already has a “Marmots – Protecting Your Vehicle” page explaining how to set up the tarp system we’re talking about here. I had actually never heard of this (I even lived in Mono County, CA for a while), but heck, it made local news rounds more than a decade ago, too:

Like many silly news stories, this becomes less cute and more sad if you spend two whole seconds thinking about it. Of course marmots are becoming more aggressive—more and more people are encroaching on their space, and from the looks of the video, doing dumb things like feeding them. The animal attraction to antifreeze isn’t their fault, either. In fact, it’s not even limited to marmots. Many creatures find the smell of engine coolant appealing, including dogs, which is why it’s extremely important to clean up coolant spills right away if you have a shop dog.

And, yeah, it’s funny to picture a giant rodent drunk on something that looks like Mountain Dew. But consuming ethylene glycol actually leads to quick kidney failure and death.

I have a hypothesis as to why it’s a particularly big problem in these high-elevation places. Driving to Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Park involves sustained high-load, low-speed driving as people come up from the coast or inland. That’s a lot of strain on a cooling system, creating a higher probability of leaks. Even if a cooling system is solid, it can burp out excess coolant (by design) through an overflow tube. Cars that had just driven to Sequoia National Park from San Francisco or LA would be more likely to drip out a little coolant than a vehicle just roaming around town. I bet that’s happening, and the marmots are unable to resist the wafting coolant smell—to them, an expansion line is like a beer tap.

With that in mind, it makes sense that this diaper defense actually would be effective, especially if you set it up quickly. Obviously, a marmot could chew through a tarp—have you seen the teeth on those things? But with the tarp in place, the coolant could potentially get caught and be more isolated from the environment. If the coolant smell is kept from emanating into the woods, marmots won’t want to bother with the car in the first place.

So if you’re parking in marmot country, like the rural parts of California near Mineral King, you really do need to defend your machine from marmots! Marmots drinking coolant means dead animals and non-functional cars; big ol’ lose-lose right there.

Got any good protect-car-from-critters tips? I need all the help I can get—mice are always eating my cars. Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post Campers Are Wrapping Their Cars in Tarps to Keep Antifreeze-Addicted Marmots Away appeared first on The Drive.

I put quite a few miles on the 2026 Hummer EV 3X Pickup Truck this summer. It went up to lake country, went off-road, and, most importantly, carried Bramble the dog and her brother Silas around the Hudson Valley. This is the Hummer EV Pickup dog review.

The /Dog

The Drive has tested dozens of cars for dog-friendliness. Ultimately, we’ve learned you can fit (almost) any dog in (almost) any car if you try hard enough. What makes a good dog taxi comes down to ease of ingress/egress and rear-seat room. But only our specialized testing can address every big question about car and canine compatibility.

Test 1: Do Dogs Look Cool In This Car?

Absolutely.

The Hummer EV has a bit of a coolness paradox. Since its primary mission is looking cool, it’s try-hard by definition, which is inherently uncool. That said, it really is technologically impressive, once again suggesting coolness. Everywhere you go in a Hummer, people will see your Hummer, formulate an opinion about your Hummer, and be like, “yep, that’s the guy with the Hummer.”

However—dogs are a great disarmer of cultivated coolness. Even a Hummer hater will be forced to crack a smile when they see you’re sharing your Hummer with dogs.

Test 2: Can Dogs Hop In and Out?

Yes, but only if they’re super springy breeds (Australian shepherds, border collies, et al).

Bramble, at 47 pounds, can jump into a closed Tacoma bed from the ground if you offer something as tantalizing as a raw hot dog. She was able to make it into the back seat without too much difficulty. Silas, closer to 70 pounds, needed a little boost. An old dog would need a ramp. And a tiny dog would have to be lifted in.

Even with the Hummer at its lowest air-suspension setting, the bottom of the seat is quite a ways off the ground.

Test 3: Do Dogs Have Room To Ride In It?

In abundance.

The Hummer EV is so ridiculously wide that, although there are only three seatbelts, you could pretty much seat five middleweight people abreast on the back bench without really making anyone too uncomfortable. Between the bench and the footwell area, I think you could carry six pretty big dogs in the back seat alone.

As for the pickup bed, you could probably put another 10 in there. But don’t do that—dogs should really not ride in truck beds beyond on-property farm driving. The wind can work in unexpected ways, especially at highway speeds, and between the high volume of noise, hard surfaces, and lack of tethering, your pet is really not safe in a truck bed above a driveway pace.

Test 4: Is the Interior Resistant To Paws and Claws?

Yes.

I always use seat covers for car testing with dogs, but I’ve been around enough interior surfaces now to know what’ll scratch easily and what won’t. The Hummer EV’s interior is made entirely of robust materials; everything’s chunky, with no dainty details or ultra-fine surfaces that an animal would be likely to scratch.

By the same token, cleaning up dog fur wouldn’t be too bad in this thing since most of the interior is leather (doesn’t hold hair) or rubberized hard material (doesn’t hold anything). In fact, you won’t need to vacuum much at all if you take the roofs off, which brings us to our next section …

Test 5: Are There Any Special Dog-Friendly Features?

The Hummer EV has four removable roof sections called Infinity Roof Sky Panels. It’s similar to a Jeep’s Freedom Top or a good ol’ fashion T-top … two rows’ worth. As you may have noticed, whether or not you have a dog yourself, these animals tend to love sticking their snouts out of car windows and getting air ram-jetted up their noses. So, in a sense, having the roof off is the ultimate olfactory experience.

That said, I got the sense that Bramble had kind of a love/hate relationship with the Hummer’s open roof. She really seemed to love it at town speed, but when we got close to or over 50 mph, her face started to look a little pained, and she started hiding behind the first row of seats. I think it’s a “too much of a good thing” scenario. Indeed, the vibe does go from pleasant breeze feeling to Navy storm-readiness test pretty quickly as you pick up the pace.

Bramble seemed unbothered by the Hummer’s vehicle-positioning party tricks (CrabWalk and King Crab rear-wheel steering moves) but definitely would not have appreciated the full force of a 1,160-horsepower WTF Mode launch.

Verdict

While the new Hummer truck is capable of unsettling acceleration and genuinely shocking maneuverability, Bramble and I enjoyed it most with all the windows open at a trot of about 35 mph. With a little breeze blowing through the cabin and early evening sun glinting off the armored-looking decorative bits, driving the thing in casual conditions feels like being Master Chief on vacation.

If your dog’s spry enough to hop up into this towering battlecruiser of a car, you will both definitely enjoy roaming around sniffing the smells the world has to offer. And hey, you won’t smell any exhaust at all thanks to the fully electric powertrain!

GMC provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this and another review.

The post 2026 Hummer EV Pickup Truck: The Dog Review appeared first on The Drive.

One of my many jobs here at The Drive is designated window shopper. I’m always scouting for deals on car parts and accessories. Today we’re running down a haul of low-spend, high-impact truck products—stuff that’s value-oriented but still solid. Your bang-for-buck buys. There are still plenty of summer weekends left, and tailgating season’s right around the corner. So if you’re looking to do some fun mods where a little money goes a long way, here are some picks to check out.

This Summer Scores catalog features deals and discount codes you won’t find elsewhere—take advantage of stacked savings that make certain products cheaper than ever!

Oedro Floor Mats

Shop the deal | Price: $129.99 | Sale: 57% off | Discount Code: OEMATS20 (unlocks 20% off)

Fitment: 2015-2026 Ford F-150 (more available)

Get form-fitted floor mats for less from Odero. These durable model-specific floor mats install in minutes and stay locked in place, protecting your floor from slush and spills.

---

Flashark Headers

Shop the deal | Price: $129.99-$299.99 | Discount Code: DRIVE (Unlocks savings up to $180)

Fitment: Silverado, Sierra, Tahoe, Suburban, Avalanche, Yukon, Escalade (GM 4.8L, 5.3L, 6.0L, 6.2L V8s)

Give some growl to your Chevy V8 without spending much money. Long-tube and shorty header options available. Full disclosure: You might want to pay somebody to install these if you’re not experienced with wrenches; header bolts can be a bear.

---

Oedro Storage Box

Shop the deal | Price: $139.00 | Sale: 53% off | Discount Code: OEMATS20 (unlocks 20% off)

Fitment: 2019-2026 Chevrolet

Three-in-one under-seat storage box. Great for tools, sports equipment, winter accessories, hunting, and fishing stuff, whatever. Installs in minutes. One-year warranty.

---

Auxito Grille Lights

Shop the deal | Price: $159.00 | Discount Code: XPLORE1 (unlocks 20% off)

Fitment: Universal

These are kind of corny, but also kind of awesome. I think as long as you install them cleanly, they can add coolness. Super-wide trucks like the Ford Raptor and HD trucks need lights like this for DOT compliance, but you can mount them on kei truck or anything in between if you want. I like this particular set because it comes with a remote control for changing brightness, colors, DRL functions, and dynamic modes. Yeah, can you tell I was a Hot Import Nights kid 20 years ago? (Just to be clear: These are decorative accent lights, not visibility aids.)

---

Napier Truck Tents

Shop the deal | Price: $115.00-$375.00 | Discount Code: THEDRIVE30 (unlocks 30% off)

Fitment: Universal

Napier makes a range of overland and tailgate setup accessories, including rooftop tents, ground tents, campsite accessories, and truck bed tents. Truck bed tents are fun in a really specific camping scenario—when you have minimal cargo and want to camp out somewhere soggy. Check out the catalog to see these and other styles of tents in action.

Dickies Seat Covers

Shop the deal | Price: $87.99 | Discount Code: AUTOPARTS (unlocks 15% off orders $35+, 20$ off $100+)

Fitment: Crew-Cab Trucks

I have spent way too much time thinking about seat covers. I’ve tried some of the really expensive ones, and honestly, they all ultimately have the same issue: They still look like seat covers, not custom upholstery. So with that in mind, I don’t recommend getting covers to restyle your interior. Rather, just get ones that will protect your seats from your grubby self and pets and whatnot. As I said, I’ve used a ton, and so far Dickies-branded ones have the best “spend the least but get the most durability” ratio. I have a bench seat cover from these guys I got when my dog Bramble was a puppy; she’s four now and still has not managed to meaningfully damage it.

Summit Exhaust Tips

Shop the deal | Price: $21.99-$49.99

Fitment: Universal

When I was a kid, I thought chrome exhaust tips were an absolute requirement for any cool-looking vehicle. Then in my teens and 20s, I decided they were incredibly lame. Now that I’m almost 40, I’m coming back around, and in fact I really appreciate a subtle-but-shiny tailpipe tip these days. The key is—don’t get a ridiculous one the size of a trash can. Just get something that fits cleanly over your existing steel pipe, and I bet you’ll be surprised at how much it classes up your vehicle.

United Pacific License Plate Frames

Shop the deal $6.99-$8.99 (and up)

Fitment: Universal

Another spot where a little piece of metal goes a long way. Adding a clean plate frame in black or chrome adds a touch of class and finish for almost no money. These are super cheap because they’re steel; if you want to step up to aluminum, you can also find that (in black or chrome) for about $40.

Sylvania License Plate Bulbs

Shop the deal | $23.99 description price | Discount Code: AUTOPARTS (unlocks 15% off orders $35+, 20$ off $100+)

Fitment: Universal (confirm fitment with your make/model)

There’s something about a crisp, 6000K cool-white light on the back of a vehicle that just makes it look a little extra fancy. I don’t necessarily recommend replacing all your vehicle bulbs with LEDs, but the license plate ones really help modernize an older vehicle, especially in dusk and early morning hours. This is an area where I recommend reaching for a real brand, too. There are cheaper alternatives on eBay, but I’ve been really pleased with Sylvania ZEVO’s longevity and brightness (I run these on most of my cars). This “168” size will fit many license plate lights, but double-check your application before buying.

Full disclosure: Prices were accurate at the time of publication but may change by the time you read this.

The post Summer Scores: Short-Money Truck Mods That Punch Above Their Price appeared first on The Drive.

Ford has a pretty deep catalog of factory accessories and performance upgrades for its current-gen vehicles, and right now it’s running a sweet 20% off promotion on items under $1,000. That means you can score a great deal on all kinds of stuff, from horsepower-increasing engine tunes to pink Bronco emblems. And since it’s all straight from Ford, you can get this stuff installed at a dealership while keeping your warranty intact.

The promo code is “REDEEM20.” Open the Ford Accessories catalog, check out what you want, and add the code at the beginning of checkout to get the deal.

I can confirm it works as of this writing—I mock-ordered a Bronco 2021-2026 2.7L EcoBoost Performance Calibration kit (adds 30 horsepower and 33 lb-ft of torque, with its own three-year warranty), which is normally $850, and the promo knocks it down to $680. That’s a lot of extra oomph for that little money and effort, considering you won’t even have to get your hands dirty to install this.

Those performance tunes are available for almost every EcoBoost Ford, too (Ranger, Explorer, and more). If you don’t need extra power, the Ford Accessories page has everything from truck parts to decorative pieces to stickers and wheels. Take a look!

Get 20% Off Ford OEM Accessories

See It

Full disclosure: This promotion was active at the time of publication, but may change without notice. See full deal details and exclusions on Ford’s site.

The post Get 20% off OEM Ford Performance Parts and Accessories With This Discount Code appeared first on The Drive.

A fresh trailer for The Grand Tour just dropped, giving us a look at the new trio of hosts in action. Amazon Prime’s adventurous car show is under a lot of cultural pressure because of how iconic its predecessors and previous hosts are. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like Thomas Holland, James Engelsman, and Francis Bourgeois have a better chance of success than others who have attempted to re-create the magic of Y2K-era BBC Top Gear.

First, let’s talk about what’s new. This 75-second clip gives us a taste of the fresh cast dynamic and the show’s aesthetic.

Like the last iteration of The Grand Tour and Top Gear before it, it looks like a combo of high-performance track driving, adventures, and goofy shenanigans. The most critical difference I’m picking up on is that, while the basic premise is the same, the host personalities are distinctly different—not only from each other, but also from the last set of GT/TG hosts. And that right there is what gives me the most hope and confidence in this release of the show.

Holland and Engelsman are established automotive media personalities thanks to their YouTube channel Throttle House. They’ve got car-guy creds, conversational chemistry, and a mass-audience-friendly approach that can bring anybody into cars better than, say, hardcore racers or deep car geeks. Bourgeois is famous in a completely different corner of the internet: trainspotting on TikTok. But he has a uniquely genuine enthusiasm that stands out without being cartoonish or looking like an act.

The other recent Top Gear-type show reboots we’ve seen have mostly been some version of famous funny guys plus one hardcore car guy. And I’m not saying the Top Gear USA (the Tanner Foust one), Top Gear America (the Dax Shepard one), Top Gear circa 2017 (the Matt LeBlanc one), or Top Gear circa 2020 (the Chris Harris one) were bad—they just, I think, tried too hard to recreate exactly what Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May had built.

For those just catching up: Top Gear is many different shows, and a website, and a magazine, among other things. But to most viewers, Top Gear means Clarkson, Hammond, and May going on adventures and razzing each other along the way. Over the course of many years, they cultivated three characters with very entertaining chemistry that cemented them as fan favorites. I would go so far as to say that particular trio is forever enshrined as a core piece of 2000s car culture.

When their run of Top Gear ended, Amazon adopted them, and they did pretty much the same thing on The Grand Tour. Now, Top Gear (sorry, I mean The Grand Tour)’s “holy trinity” is moving on altogether. And while Clarkson has officially given his blessing to the new team, they still need to win over the audience.

Based on all the sizzle reels I’ve seen, and now today’s new trailer, I’m really optimistic about the new crew. Nobody will ever replace Clarkson, Hammond, and May—they came up in an entirely different media environment from today’s. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still have a great, fun car show featuring three people on a grand tour. And from the looks of what we’ve seen so far, I think that’s exactly what we’re getting with the “new knobs” of GT.

Got a story tip? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com

The post New ‘The Grand Tour’ Trailer: Why This Trio Can Win Where Other ‘Top Gear’ Knockoffs Failed appeared first on The Drive.

It’s not surprising that a Toyota Prius is still running well at 100,000 miles. But to rack up that many miles in eight months? That’s got to be one of the most aggressive unofficial durability tests the current-gen car’s gone through. Even NYC taxis don’t usually go that far in such a short time. So, naturally, when I heard about Shane Somers’ 2026 Prius LE hitting this milestone, I was curious to hear how the car had fared.

Somers has a medical supply transportation business, shuttling critical items to hospitals and nursing homes. He put 110,000 miles on a new Land Cruiser last year. After we wrote about that, I told him to hit me up if he ever wanted to share more insights on super high-mileage experiences with new vehicles.

Well, last week I got another note from him: “My 2026 Toyota Prius LE reached 100,000 miles today. I’ve owned the vehicle for eight months now, and it took over for my trusty Land Cruiser not that long ago, it seems.” Somers reported that the car’s running great and still pretty much looks mint. Even the driver’s seat, which now has countless hours of butt-time, still looks pretty darn nice.

Here’s the maintenance record:

• 10 Oil Changes
• 13 Tire Rotations 
• 3 Engine Air Filters
• 3 Cabin Air Filters
• 1 Engine Coolant/Inverter Service
• 1 Set of Tires (5 flats with the factory tires, none with the Goodyear Assurance tires)
• 1 Alignment 
• 1 Set of Front Wipers Replaced 

So, outside of standard prescribed maintenance, it’s been 100,000 miles of drama-free driving. Call this validation to point to when you need to articulate why automotive immortality is just a matter of fluid and filter changes!

The first few years of a car’s life are always going to be the strongest. All the bushings and metals haven’t been decayed by the environment yet, so the vehicle’s optimally insulated against the road and outside air. But still, I find it interesting to hear how a car driven this much this early in its life is behaving. And it sounds like this one’s doing just fine so far.

Racked up a huge number of miles in a short time? I’d love to hear about it! I’m at andrew.collins@thedrive.com

The post This 2026 Toyota Prius Hit 100,000 Miles in Eight Months. Here’s How It Held Up appeared first on The Drive.

The 2026 GMC Hummer EV‘s specs are wild. Abundant ground clearance, aggressive approach angle, Zeusian power output, and tank-like wheel control; it really does push the envelope of off-road capability with novel technology. But it’s also about the width of a container ship, and that introduces a new challenge in real-world off-road driving.

After a few days of tootling around the Hudson Valley with the roof off, I brought this Hummer EV 3X Pickup Truck to Northeast Off-Road Adventures—a 75-acre off-road driver training facility where I work as a trail guide. The property has a deep network of mild-to-wild trails, and they do everything from teaching Subaru Crosstrek owners how to get out of their comfort zone without cooking their CVTs to advanced recovery training with fully built overland rigs.

In my many years of professional off-road driving, squeezing a 9,600-pound electric Hummer through tight, tree-wrapped northeastern trails was actually not the stupidest “big fish, little pond” scenario I’ve had to wheel in. That memory still belongs to weeks spent bushwhacking through Australian jungles in an Isuzu NPR box truck, which was as much swearing, sweating, and shoveling as it was driving. I’ve gotten a lot better at vehicle handling since then, and the ’26 Hummer is practically a spaceship in comparison to that lumbering barge (although, hilariously, the box truck was actually skinnier according to spec sheets).

Anyway, I’ve now had enough real-world off-road time in the Hummer EV to form a more nuanced analysis than “trok big.” While I doubt many of these trucks will actually be used in high-risk handling scenarios, you still want to know if those multi-wheel-steering party tricks are gimmicks or actually any good, right?

Equipment

My test rig was a 3X Pickup Truck three-motor model with the optional 24-module battery pack and the Carbon Fiber Edition package, unlocking the preposterous power output claims of “up to 1,160 horsepower and up to 13,000 lb-ft of torque.” That’s not a typo, but it is a bit of a slanted spec—GMC shares wheel torque rather than motor torque to make the truck sound cooler. Actual output is closer to 1,200 lb-ft, which is still a lot, even if the truck weighs almost 10,000 pounds.

Tires are 35-inch (LT305/55R22) Goodyear Wrangler Territory all-terrains, which don’t have a particularly aggressive tread or much sidewall. They were wrapped around 22-inch carbon fiber wheels (yes, they’re real), part of a $13,700 Carbon Fiber Edition Package that features the material extensively on the vehicle’s exterior.

The carbon kit looks absolutely incredible, but I mean, I’m having a hard time imagining a louder “this truck will never actually be driven off-road” signal to anybody who knows what they’re looking at. It’s scary enough imagining how much it’d cost to fix the vehicle’s aluminum body if it hit a tree. What the heck are you supposed to do if you bang a carbon wheel into a rock?

The test truck did not have GMC’s Extreme Off-Road Package, which swaps the 22s for 18s (giving you much more tire sidewall), adds front and rear locking differential control (not quite the same as diffs in a gas truck), skid plates, underbody cameras, heavy-duty ball spline half shafts, and rocker protection. Those features would have aided significantly in traction and capability. But it’s also a $10,000 box-tick at the dealership, so you might not be inclined to splurge on it.

The Hummer EV’s steering and the software that controls it are a lot more interesting than its accessories. The truck’s rear wheels can steer up to 10 degrees, and it uses this capability in two distinct ways. Both the “CrabWalk” and “King Crab” modes were probably mainly cooked up as a party trick for owners to brag about, but without spoiling the next section of this review, I gotta say, they really work when you want them.

CrabWalk

CrabWalk is a “four-wheel steer mode that gives diagonal-drive functionality at low speeds,” per GMC. “At low speeds, CrabWalk turns the rear wheels at the same angle as the front wheels, allowing the vehicle to move diagonally to help traverse tight trails.”

King Crab

King Crab mode “makes the rear wheels turn up to two times more than the front so you can swing the rear of the vehicle to help reposition the vehicle on a trail.” In practical terms, it lets you make very aggressive lateral position changes.

The best-articulated explanation of how these systems work is on a Connecticut GMC dealer‘s site:

The Hummer’s “rear-steer system uses electric motors to adjust toe angles at each rear wheel independently, responding to commands from the vehicle’s control systems within milliseconds.

Multiple sensors continuously monitor vehicle speed, steering wheel angle and rate, throttle position, brake pressure, and individual wheel speeds. The control computer processes this data hundreds of times per second, calculating optimal rear-wheel angles to achieve the driver’s intended path while maintaining stability and traction. The system operates seamlessly whether you’re navigating a mall parking lot or conquering a boulder-strewn trail.

Safety systems work in concert with the steering technology. If sensors detect potential instability or loss of traction, the system can independently adjust rear-wheel angles, apply individual wheel braking, or modulate motor torque to maintain control. You experience this as simply a vehicle that goes where you point it, even in conditions that would challenge conventional SUVs.”

I mean, even a Luddite like myself has to admit that’s pretty cool and technologically creative.

On the Trail

I ran my off-road familiarization in three stages. First I tried to get comfortable with the vehicle’s size and visibility, then I played with the steering modes in a wide-open lawn to see how they felt, then I got wedged so tightly between trees that I had to have my buddy Alex hop out and spot me while praying I wouldn’t have to buy GMC any new pieces of carbon fiber. Getting comfortable with an EV powertrain spinning road-bias AT tires over loose stones and sticks was also quite an experience.

Surveying the world from the cab of a Hummer EV feels like peering out from a fortress turret. Everything’s far below you, and the windows are weirdly small. It’s easy enough to get used to on the street, but it really makes it tough to look at obstacles. Annoyingly, the vehicle’s 360-degree bird’s-eye camera only shows you what’s immediately next to the truck. Which, again, is perfectly fine for parallel parking but not particularly helpful in trail course plotting.

The Extreme Off-Road package supposedly adds more “virtual spotter” camera capability, but I wasn’t really impressed with the vision afforded by this model’s screen setup.

When it comes to physically positioning the truck, both crab modes are brain-breakingly impressive. Since the rear wheels can turn with, or against, the fronts, you have an incredibly wide range of control over the position of the vehicle in low-speed situations. The CrabWalk and King Crab modes made me feel like a kid again, on my knees, scooting a little toy around my mom’s rug—not like I was shunting a five-ton machine with five figures’ worth of carbon fiber around dangerous obstacles.

The super-aggressive rear-wheel steering feels unnatural and impossible. So while it’s easy to use, it definitely takes some getting used to.

That said, I only had a week with the truck, so I wasted no time looking for trouble. Alex (one of the main NORA guides) and I started lumbering down a trail, and it took about three minutes for me to get us mired.

On a steep, tight, and loose ascent, the truck started spinning its Wrangler Territory tires (in their defense, I hadn’t bothered to air down). The off-road driving techniques I’m used to don’t all work the same way in an EV as they do in a traditional car—there’s no left-foot braking, no clutch slipping. In many ways, an EV powertrain is superior off-road. You can hypothetically control power output with such extreme precision, and there’s no need to rev an engine to make torque.

But in this moment, with the windshield showing sky and the parking sensors beeping at me, I was simply struggling. Every time I tried to breathe on the go-pedal, the vehicle seemed to want to spin its tires, which was causing the whole machine to slowly but consistently slip down and left towards a big ol’ tree.

It was the perfect time for four-wheel steering to shine.

Alex kept an eye on things, ready to yell if any carbon was about to crack, while I clicked into CrabWalk mode and carefully, carefully, stepped into the right pedal. The vehicle found traction where no other truck could have, and simultaneously scooted away from danger and up the obstacle.

And that wasn’t even the last toy we had at our disposal. The Hummer EV also has an Extract Mode, which maxes out the air suspension to lift the truck another six inches at low speed, for, as GM puts it, “traversing boulders, fording water, or surmounting other tough obstacles.”

All this to substantiate: The Hummer EV’s crustacean modes are cool, and yes, they do work as advertised. And with that functionality combined with the vehicle’s immense ground clearance (no driveline to drag on obstacles) and aggressive approach angle, I have no doubt that a skilled driver could take this thing places where a building-sized truck has no business being. And that’s the bragging right you’re buying, after all.

But the experience also confirmed what I expected about this truck when I read the spec sheet. While the Hummer EV’s terrain-management technology is incredible, it really only solves problems created by the vehicle itself. See, I’d driven that same obstacle before in a third-gen 4Runner, and no drama. I was genuinely impressed with how well the Hummer got its girth through some glorified goat paths, but, like, do you really need your SUV to be wide enough to play football in?

Ultimately, this isn’t really a vehicle that needs to make sense. It’s a toy. And in the same way that plenty of Lamborghinis never go on a racetrack, the Hummer’s capability is really more of a “not that you would, but you could” kind of thing.

I’m not going to be saving up for one of these myself, but I’m here to tell you, it really can wheel. In spite of itself.

GMC provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Hummer EV 3X Pickup Specs

Quick Take

As close as you can get to driving the Warthog from Halo while still being street-legal.

The post 2026 Hummer EV Off-Road Review: It’s Technology Versus Tight Trails appeared first on The Drive.

Dremel is best known for its high-quality compact cutting tools, but the brand also has a big supporting cast of equipment you can use for automotive projects, DIY crafting, and all kinds of stuff around the house. Check out some killer deals going on Amazon right now.

• Save 44%: Blueprint Project Multi-Tool: A user-friendly oscillating tool with an application selector that automatically sets the right speed for sanding, scraping, and cutting. 
• Save 21%: Blueprint Multi-Drill: An innovative 3-in-1 drill with a built-in stud finder, detachable laser level and bubble level to help mount TVs, frames or assemble furniture. 
• Save 50%: 11-Piece Cleaning & Polishing Accessory Kit: Includes polishing wheels, compounds and brushes for cleaning, restoring and polishing jewelry and more. 
• Save 31%: Stylo+ Craft Tool: A lightweight, pen-shaped rotary tool designed for engraving, carving, polishing and other precision craft projects.

More Dremel Deals

Dremel Blueprint Project Multi-Tool (MM12V-S1)

• MSRP: $139.00 
• Sale Price: $99.00 (Save $40) 

Dremel Blueprint Multi-Drill (DD12V-S1)

• MSRP: $99.00 
• Sale Price: $79.00 (Save $20) 

Dremel Stylo+ Versatile Craft Tool (2050-15)

• MSRP: $57.99 
• Sale Price: $39.99 (Save $18) 

Dremel Multi-Max Oscillating Tool Kit (MM35-02)

• MSRP: $89.99 
• Sale Price: $79.99 (Save $10) 

Dremel 11-Piece Cleaning & Polishing Accessory Kit (729-01)

• MSRP: $18.99 
• Sale Price: $9.99 (Save $9)

These prices were accurate at the time of publication, but could change without notice. Check early, check often for the best deals!

The post Get up to 50% off Super-Useful Dremel Tools During This Summer Sale appeared first on The Drive.

A letter from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to the six senators steering the highway bill is ping-ponging around news feeds this week. Buried in it is one phrase we just have to talk about: “Freedom Car.” The Freedom Car concept is broadly a good one, but the way it’s being pitched is short-sighted at best and backwards at worst.

What Is the “Freedom Car”?

This is not a new Dodge trim level or a pitch for a government-subsidized American version of East Germany’s Trabant—though there is still some irony in Secretary Duffy’s presentation.

This is also not a proposed law or specific regulation. It’s a line item in a wish list of ideas. I’ll copy-paste the exact language of what was written right here.

In Appendix A, under the heading Protecting Consumer Choice, Duffy wrote the following:

“Freedom Car – Right to Drive Disconnected and Non-Automated: Prohibit any Federal, State, tribal, or local authority from mandating that vehicles sold or operated on public roads be equipped with automated driving systems or be capable of transmitting data wirelessly.”

Then it’s mentioned again in the body on page three:

“Protecting Consumer Choice: We must protect the right of Americans to purchase and drive traditional vehicles by prohibiting any mandates that would require vehicles to be capable of wireless data transmission or automated driving.”

Republicans Also Pitched ‘FreedomCAR’ in 2002

Here’s the irony I alluded to in the last section. In 2002, then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham launched the “FreedomCAR Partnership” idea. (CAR was an acronym for Cooperative Automotive Research.) It was a cost-sharing R&D deal between the Department of Energy and Detroit’s Big Three (Ford, GM, and what was then called DaimlerChrysler) to commercialize hydrogen fuel-cell tech.

Then-President Bush elevated it to the 2003 FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative with the goal of reducing dependence on foreign oil. Spoiler alert: It didn’t really pan out, and we did not pivot to hydrogen by 2010 as Secretary Abraham had hoped.

Put another way:

• The 2002 FreedomCAR was a Republican-branded program built entirely around a technology mandate push—get the industry to adopt hydrogen/fuel-cell tech, framed around “freedom,” including consumer choice.
• Duffy’s 2026 Freedom Car is a Republican-branded program built around blocking a technology mandate—stopping government from requiring connected/automated tech, also framed as consumer freedom.

Same party, same slogan, same “freedom” whistle—opposite policy. This kind of slogany marketing language is a bipartisan Washington habit, but the “Freedom” + “car” construction specifically is now on its second Republican outing. This time, we’re talking about keeping technology out rather than developing it.

The Hole In The 2026 ‘Freedom Car’ Logic

Duffy wrote about preventing the government from mandating autonomous or connected cars. At first glance, it seems like a good idea. And in the short term, an official policy in that spirit would protect your right to drive pre-Bluetooth cars. But it doesn’t say jack about what automakers will actually build and sell.

Because guess what: There’s a finite amount of non-digitally connected cars, and their population is dwindling. Daily driving a well-maintained 2005 Mazda3 is viable in 2026. What about in 2046?

If the U.S. government actually wanted to protect Americans’ rights to drive disconnected cars, it’d have to create legislation forcing automakers to guarantee their continued existence. The way the “Freedom Car” idea is framed in Duffy’s letter puts all the power in the hands of companies. All they have to do is collectively decide all their vehicles will be connected, and by the time our kids are driving, it’ll be impractical at best and impossible at worst to daily drive something old enough to not actively collect user data.

See also: insurance companies. Right now, a popular car insurance money grab is to get drivers to install their own car trackers with the promise of lowering your rates if your driving profile meets their standards. Insurance is compulsory in most states, so insurers could collectively decide they will no longer underwrite non-tracked vehicles, pitch it as improving road safety, and boom, old cars are effectively illegal.

So, yeah, the new “Freedom Car” idea is a toothless token concept that sounds good but, as-written, would offer no protection to drivers and consumers from the real regulators of American roads: automakers and insurance companies.

The proposal has it backwards. It aims all its restrictions at government without mentioning the real forces that will decide whether a disconnected car exists in 20 years. If protecting the freedom to drive off-grid is the real goal, the lever isn’t stopping government mandates—it’s barring big businesses from collecting the data in the first place. Or at least fortifying lanes for consumers to opt out of it.

Got any government or corporate insight on automotive data collection? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post The ‘Freedom Car’ Aims The Right Idea At The Wrong Villain appeared first on The Drive.

Like many of you reading this—I got into cars as a kid and never really grew out of them. But, and I bet this is relatable too, my tastes have evolved. I used to think every vehicle needed underglow and one exhaust pipe per cylinder; now I’m like, “let’s just put nice tires on it and keep the oil changed.” But hitting a lowrider show in Kingston, New York, this weekend reminded me just how awesome pure show cars really can be.

At the end of last week, I happened to see a post about the “Envy Frenzy” show, hosted by the Made 2 Envy Auto Club, on a local paper’s site. The lead image was not the kind of car I’d ever own or build—a rockabilly-meets-Chip-Foose-style pickup truck that looked like something you’d park in front of a tattoo parlor as a prop.

But it caught my attention because you don’t see that kind of thing too often in New York state, especially Ulster County, where I spend most of my time lately. The Daily Freeman article explained that the Envy Frenzy show had run its course 14 years ago, and was now returning for the first time since 2012.

As I was flipping through images on the group’s Instagram feed, which has the joyful-chaos aesthetic of an airbrushed t-shirt you’d buy on spring break, I realized all these cars were way out of my comfort zone. I had to see them for myself.

Here’s a big batch of images I took that you can swipe through—I’m not going to annotate everything, but I’ll call out some highlights below.

There was so much creativity on display—both mechanical and artistic. Truck beds cut to fit differentials, incompatible body panels grafted together, homemade control arms. Someone had even made a decorative spiderweb out of rebar and used it as a wheel well?! And that’s before we get into the chroming and airbrushing.

One of my favorite things about this genre of car modding is how even (especially) engine trim, air-suspension plumbing, and often-unseen parts are chromed or decorated or deliberately made to look a certain way. Does it make sense for a street car? No freaking way. But many of these vehicles are closer to art projects than actual cars.

I even saw a couple of tuner cars done up in the Y2K “Hot Import Nights” style, which is a whole other look kind of adjacent to lowriders we can revisit another time.

It’s not that I forgot lowriders exist—it’s just that I hadn’t really seen any up close in so long I’d forgotten just how crazy they can get. And perhaps more importantly, the last ones I’d seen were the (literally) museum-quality lowriders on display at the Petersen a few years back. It was really a lot of fun to see the extreme lengths people had gone to to make vehicles ridiculously low and shiny. And as ever, I kind of prefer seeing what creative DIYers on a limited time and money budget can do rather than what the best-of-the-best can build with bottomless resources.

All this to say—if you’ve been into cars for a long time and you’re starting to get bored of seeing clean Bimmers, Miatas, and Porsches at every coffee meetup, step out of your comfort zone and check out an automotive genre you’re not typically into.

Is there another automotive show-car subculture I should revisit? Hit me up at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post A Lowrider Meet Convinced Me: Enthusiasts Should Step Out of Their Comfort Zones appeared first on The Drive.

During a 2026 GMC Sierra EV Denali Max Range test drive that lasted seven days and hundreds of miles, I got intimately familiar with the truck’s pros and cons (detailed in the review linked above). While I was impressed by its performance and luxury, my favorite feature had nothing to do with the powertrain—it was the MidGate Pro, the fully removable back wall of the cab.

This functionality is available on both the GMC Sierra EV and Chevrolet Silverado EV. The way it works is that the rear glass and back wall of the cab tuck away, allowing you to either carry something really long or just enjoy the breeze from a partially open cockpit.

Some of you might remember that another pair of GM trucks from a few generations ago, the Chevrolet Avalanche and Cadillac Escalade EXT, also had such a feature. I have to admit I never thought much about it when those vehicles were new. But now that it’s back, I’m absolutely thrilled.

An electric truck is particularly well-suited to this feature because the cab and bed form a single contiguous body (with traditional body-on-frame trucks, they’re separate). Plus—no emissions, so no need to worry about monoxide leaking into the cockpit.

GM EV Truck MidGate

Now that you know what a MidGate is, I’ll whip through why GM’s execution is good.

• Super easy, single-person operation: It takes more time to clear whatever junk you might have sitting on the truck’s back seat than it does to snap the MidGate down
• Idiot-proof: There’s a little catch-nub that securely holds the glass as you release it, making it easy to handle
• Self-contained: The seatback has a pocket for the rear glass that becomes enclosed, so you don’t have to leave the glass at home or anything—you can put it out of harm’s way completely
• Downside: tonneau cover from hell: The thing I hated most about the Sierra EV is the hard tonneau cover that goes over the bed. This must be removed to use the MidGate, and it’s very heavy and cumbersome

GM EV Truck MidGate Tour

The best “how to use the MidGate” explainer video is here. This shows exactly how to use the system:

For those of you who want the closest look, I’ll annotate a detail gallery.

Real-World Cargo Capacity

Pulled from the review—here are the real-world tape measure distances I got, not spec sheet claims:

• Truck bed length, tailgate closed:
  • 70″
• Truck bed length including tailgate-as-cargo-floor, tailgate down:
  • 95″
• “Practical max length,” midgate open, from the frontmost hard floor to the back of the bed, tailgate closed:
  • 95″ (the length of true cargo floor you get by opening the midgate is the same as the tailgate’s length)
• Same, but tailgate down:
  • 119″
• Using all space behind driver’s seat, through midgate, to the end of the bed, tailgate closed:
  • 110″
• Same, but tailgate down:
  • 134″
• Longest thing you could safely carry without really annoying the driver or front passenger or hanging off the edge of the tailgate (item resting on center console):
  • 160″

Would you find the midgate useful?

The post GM’s Gimmicky Midgate Is Actually One of the Best Reasons to Buy an EV Truck appeared first on The Drive.

The Bissell Little Green Max Pet SmartMix Carpet Cleaner is down to $119.99 from its normal $159.99 list price—a nice little discount on a compact-but-capable upholstery cleaner that specializes in pet hair removal.

My dog Bramble is half Australian shepherd and half golden retriever; she seems to jettison about five pounds of floof every time she hops in or out of the car. I had kind of given up on trying to keep my machine interiors clean, but now that this thing is on sale, I’m tempted to give it a shot. The DeWalt and Ryobi vacuums I’ve tried sort of work, but you need something with real extraction power like this Bissell unit if you’re going to tackle real stains.

If you also have to drive a dog taxi, you might want to take advantage of this sale yourself!

Save $40: Bissell “Little Green” To Keep Your Car Clean

See It

And speaking of de-dogging your car, I also recommend checking out the Chemical Guys “Grubbie Edge” fur remover and Pet Hair Removal Brush. Both do a great job of gently pulling dog hair out of automotive carpet fibers, which then makes them much easier to vacuum up.

I personally use the Grubbie Edge on every interior clean. It’s great for getting annoying sprigs of Australian shepherd hair out of corners next to seats and consoles.

More Amazon Automotive-Adjacent Products on Sale

Mothers Ceramic Spray & Rinse (28% off): $12.99 on sale

Gerber Ultra-Compact EDC Box Cutter (13% off): $13.98 on sale

Articulating Borescope (20% off): $103.99 on sale

Prices were accurate at the time of publication but may change without notice. We’ll add to the list as new stuff catches our eye!

The post Get 25% off the Perfect Car Vacuum for Pet Owners appeared first on The Drive.

This summer, I drove a 2026 GMC Sierra EV to my buddy’s farm in Maine. He has a diesel, manual, OBS Ford dump truck, and he said the same thing we’re probably going to get in the comments section below this article: “That ain’t a real truck.” This $100,000 luxury vehicle feels a little too nice to load sheep into, but the cargo bed is huge, towing capacity is strong, and the view from behind the steering wheel is commanding. So while it’s not really set up to be an agricultural workhorse, it’s a pretty perfect solution for someone who wants to cruise in comfort and occasionally carry heavy loads.

I had plans to tow a derelict International Scout on a U-Haul trailer across New England with this thing, but that fell through, so I had to make do lugging around moving boxes and other unwieldy junk. It did that very well, and between its 400-plus-mile range and impressive charging speed, I didn’t really feel like I was sacrificing any road-trip convenience by going electric. Even if the trailer had cut my range in half, I don’t think it would have been that big a deal to add a couple more fast-charger stops.

Six-figure price tags are commonplace among high-luxe trucks now, so that aspect of this thing isn’t even eye-watering anymore. If you’re seriously considering something in the luxe-truck vehicle class, you really owe it to yourself to at least look closely at one of these. It’s absolutely immense, which is an understandable turnoff for some. This air-suspension variant delivered distinctly comfortable driving dynamics, a high-class interior, and plenty of headroom for towing and hauling when you need them.

Something like this is never going to make sense if you need to haul livestock every day and do all your own maintenance. But if you want a truly comfortable, super-modern daily driver that also works as a truck when you need it to, the Sierra EV is excellent.

Pros

• The power delivery is excellent; it feels very powerful without being overwhelmingly fast, and it doesn’t need to be.
• Ride quality is great too, staying smooth over bumps
• The heads-up display is perfect on this truck, with navigation, speed, and cruise control settings that are clear but small enough to stay non-distracting, and the permanently displayed arrival time is a thoughtful touch
• Google Maps, which the vehicle runs natively rather than with Apple CarPlay, is nicely optimized for the vehicle. It shows the expected battery level at your destination, highlighting charge options along the route, to the point that I never missed Apple CarPlay
• This truck has a “midgate,” which means the rear seats and rear window basically fold away to extend the cargo bed significantly or give you a little open-air driving experience. It’s a huge advantage of having the cargo bed and cab be contiguous
• The interior design is really nice, with excellent lighting
• All touch points, including leather upholstery and hard buttons, feel great
• The ingress grab handles (up on the A-pillar) are perfect—my shorter wife could easily hoist herself into the immense truck. A lot of vehicles miss this
• Interior storage is great, including the spacious center console and sliding cup holders
• The front trunk is surprisingly roomy and includes charging options
• The gauge cluster strikes a really nice balance of good design and a modern look without being overwhelmed by pointless animations—it uses all the pixels without flooding the screen with distracting lines and colors
• The column shifter takes a little getting used to but is pretty intuitive, and I love how it stays nice and out of the way
• The large central tablet infotainment display somehow fits well here and looks like it belongs, even though it’s basically just a slab
• The row of buttons along the bottom of the tablet is very satisfying, as is the volume knob
• This truck feels like it splits the difference between heavy-duty and luxury even better than the high-end gas trucks I’ve driven. It seems substantial but also swift and executive-ish
• The rear-wheel steering makes maneuvering pretty manageable
• The bed is low enough to actually load cargo into, and deep enough to give you a big cargo area with the tonneau cover on and an absolutely huge one with it off
• Unbelievably roomy rear seat, which means a surplus of interior cargo room

Cons

• Doing anything on the infotainment system was enough to trigger the “pay attention to the road” alert, so by the vehicle’s own logic, it’s too distracting to use
• The wood trim is a bit of a letdown. It looks kind of mid-quality, then you tap it, and it really seems cheap
• The tonneau cover is unbelievably unwieldy—both heavy and cumbersome. If you only need to retract it partway, it’s totally fine. But when you want to take it all the way out, dealing with it is absolute hell
• The sunroof is terrible, and this is coming from someone who loves overhead glass. It lets in way too much heat, to the point that I had to wear a hat while driving to keep the sun off my face
• You can’t really turn the central tablet off—you can, but it just leaves you with an illuminated display that constantly reads “the screen is off.” Why?
• I wish there were a little more home-screen customization; I should be able to add a cargo-bed monitor camera to the home screen so I can view it while the map is up
• You can’t get a battery temperature or motor temperature gauge, which seems like an easy and useful addition for a truck meant for towing and heavy hauling
• Public charging didn’t seem cheaper than fueling a gas vehicle

Real-World Cargo Capacity

It’s hard to get a sense for how big this truck and its bed really are from photos. It’s enormous—and the cargo bed is no joke. Here are the real-world tape measure distances I got, not spec sheet claims:

• Truck bed length, tailgate closed:
  • 70″
• Truck bed length including tailgate-as-cargo-floor, tailgate down:
  • 95″
• “Practical max length,” midgate open, from the frontmost hard floor to the back of the bed, tailgate closed:
  • 95″ (the length of true cargo floor you get by opening the midgate is the same as the tailgate’s length)
• Same, but tailgate down:
  • 119″
• Using all space behind driver’s seat, through midgate, to the end of the bed, tailgate closed:
  • 110″
• Same, but tailgate down:
  • 134″
• Longest thing you could safely carry without really annoying the driver or front passenger or hanging off the edge of the tailgate (item resting on center console):
  • 160″

The math might be a little funky there because it’s hand-measuring. But that’s over 13 feet from the center console to the tailgate down—you could carry a few 12-foot boards without a safety flag if you were careful.

Verdict

I put almost 600 miles on this truck in the week I had it and, by and large, really enjoyed it. It’s smooth, cool, and comfortable, and the bed is plenty big enough for real truck stuff. I hated removing and reinstalling the tonneau cover (seriously, the thing felt like it weighed a ton), but the mid-gate function is awesome.

I’m optimistic I’d get better at using the infotainment system without staring at it if I owned the truck, but the sunroof is a real whiff. I don’t know how GM let this thing go to production without a real retractable cover—having to drive around with a hat on is wack, and a “stowable” fold-in solution is a major bummer at this price point.

Still, if I had money, I’d be thinking about this truck for the midgate alone—you get about 11 feet(!) of horizontal cargo space with the rear glass and seats folded away. And it’s a well-thought-out feature, not just a gimmick: The rear glass is stowed very safely within the seatback itself as the back seats fold flat.

Having 400-plus miles of range meant I could drive all the way from New York to Maine and back pretty painlessly, choosing charging stops that were convenient for me rather than building my trip around the infrastructure. The truck charged quickly on DC Fast Chargers, though you won’t really be saving much money if you top up this way. I was paying almost as much to recharge this thing at public stations along the highway as I do to fill my own old truck’s 24-gallon gas tank.

The Sierra EV has plenty of power, though I won’t say it feels particularly fast. But it’s a great long-range cargo-carrying cruiser, and I was bummed to give it back.

GM provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 GMC Sierra EV Denali Max Range Specs

Email the author at andrew.collins@thedrive.com

The post 2026 GMC Sierra EV Denali Max Range Pros and Cons Review: My Favorite Electric Car so Far appeared first on The Drive.

Last March, the US Secret Service shared a concept image of an eight-lug, HD-chassis Escalade around the same time GM was reported to have won a $14.8-million contract to build a new presidential limo. Today, President Trump indicated that military-Escalade concept has come to life, and he’s ordering 250 of them.

“The one and only Escalade,” the President said in his hour-long address. “You know we ordered, I think, 250 Escalades, right? We ordered 250 Escalades … We look sharp in those Escalades.” He also made a bunch of other comments ragging on the UAW president.

An Escalade is about $90,000, so that’d make this order worth over $22,500,000. It’s unclear if these are going to be regular Escalades for get-around duty or armored ones like the concept shown off last year. Most likely, they will have at least some upfitting and will be a little more pricey than the Escalades you can lease from your local Cadillac store.

While specs have not been disclosed, these vehicles will probably run on GM HD pickup truck frames with big axles and armor. Even a “basic” armored Escalade can easily cost over $300,000.

But if these Escalades look like the truck USSS teased last year, the “Escalade” part will pretty much just be the bumpers and exterior decorative bits. It’ll probably have the same exact underpinnings as the Suburbans in use now.

USSS also has a big mobile command center bus, various Ford and Chevy SUVs, and at least one Terradyne Gurkha tactical vehicle, which is built on a Ford Super Duty platform.

Got a tip? Send us a note a tips@thedrive.com.

The post Feds Bulk-Order 250 Cadillac Escalades So the Secret Service Can Ride in Style appeared first on The Drive.

We now have spied-prototype confirmation that a BMW i4 Cabriolet is indeed in the works. Looks like it’ll adopt the Neue Klasse design and use a traditional cloth roof instead of a folding hardtop. Insiders are telling us this car should come out for the 2028 model year.

Convertible EVs are (nearly) non-existent—the Maserati Gran Cabrio Folgore is kind of the only real one at this point. The ill-fated Polestar had dreamed up a very cool electric open-top car called the Polestar 6. I remember seeing a concept of that at The Quail a few years back and absolutely loving it, but I can’t say I was surprised when it was delayed. Now that Polestar’s done for in America, I think it’s unlikely that car will ever make it to series production.

But BMW has a better handle on the car business and a long history of selling drop-tops. It’ll be interesting to see what compromises in terms of weight and range this i4 cabrio has to make to be viable. Perhaps the inherent skateboard-like structure of electric platforms will actually make this objectively better than some existing convertible cars.

The current i4 comes in four main flavors, all with a “gran coupe” (sleek four-door) body: i4 eDrive40 (the 335 horsepower base model), i4 xDrive40 (all-wheel drive and more power), and i4 M60 (the fast one until a true i4 M comes out).

Range on those cars is between about 230 and 330 miles depending on specs.

I think it’s highly probable that BMW will also release an i4 hardtop coupe around the same time as this, but the US release for both might lag behind Europe. A local BMW contact told me US dealers are struggling to get their hands on iX3 allocations because those models are in such high demand in the motherland.

Convertibles don’t make much sense objectively, but they sure are delightful to ride in. If you disagree—you just haven’t experienced one in the right weather. At any rate, I’m thrilled to see that automakers aren’t giving up on whimsy entirely.

Spied a prototype? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com

The post Spied: BMW i4 Convertible Confirms EV Droptops Are Going Mainstream appeared first on The Drive.

The “Vevor” brand kind of came out of nowhere, huh? I had never heard of it a few years ago, and today it churns out absolutely everything from tool kits to tire changers to microphone stands and camping gear. I’ve now tested quite a few Vevor products, and I have to say, I’ve been consistently impressed with the value for money. So when the stuff goes on sale, there are definitely great deals to be had.

Vevor is kind of like Harbor Freight. For the vast majority of consumers, it’s a great option for get-stuff-done gear. It’s not elite or professional grade, but at these prices, that’s totally fine.

Use the code VVUSTOP to get 15% off stuff on Vevor’s Hot Sale page through the end of July.

And check out these deals with some even bigger discounts this month:

The post Get Deep Discounts on Vevor’s Already Low-Priced Tools and Gear During This Sale appeared first on The Drive.

Mavis Tire just bought Pep Boys from Carl Icahn’s holding company for $700 million—making one of the nation’s biggest tire retailers even bigger. But the more interesting thing isn’t that Mavis expanded. It’s who Mavis really is, and what it tells you about the shop on your corner.

Earlier this month, we clocked that O’Reilly Auto Parts was looking to buy NAPA’s auto parts stores, which brought us down a rabbit hole of the American aftermarket auto parts businesses. (TL;DR: There are only four major auto parts retailers left in America, and two could merge.)

This week, the “Mavis to Acquire Pep Boys” release hit my desk. Mavis has several thousand locations across the country and Pep Boys has about 800—so this is mildly interesting industry news in its own right. But it made me wonder—regardless of how many auto service chains we have in America, how many holding companies are actually in control of them? The answer is six—there are six monolithic companies running almost every chain car repair place in the country.

And I bet you can guess where the real power behind those parent companies comes from: yep, private equity. Mavis (BayPine/Goldman/TSG), Driven (Roark), Jiffy Lube (now Monomoy), Take 5 (Roark), Strickland Brothers (Roark since 2024)—the automotive service industry, just like the aftermarket, is being rolled up by PE firms that keep the familiar regional signage precisely because the local brand equity is the asset.

The Trick Is Keeping the Sign the Same

The playbook is straightforward. A private equity firm buys a regional chain—say, a beloved tire shop that’s been in your area for 40 years—and then it does not repaint the building. The local name stays up. The brand equity that shop spent decades building is precisely the asset the buyer paid for, so painting over it would be lighting money on fire.

The result is that you can drive across the country and visit what look like a dozen different locally famous tire-and-service shops, and half of them answer to the same parent company. The fragmentation you see on the street is a feature, not an accident. It’s what lets these companies get to enormous scale without looking like the Walmart of oil changes or starting fresh with brand-building.

Now, of course, there are still thousands of single-location, operator-owned indie auto shops. And there are also franchises in the mix—quite a few of the brands on this list below do have local owners for some locations, even if the name on the door belongs to a bigger company. But when it comes to the local brand-name type enterprises, here’s how the six empires of auto service shake out.

Mavis Tire Express Services

Who owns it: Private equity—a group including BayPine, Goldman Sachs’ West Street, and TSG Consumer Partners.

This is the one buying Pep Boys, and it’s the poster child for the strategy. You may know Mavis by its own name if you’re in the Northeast, but if not, you almost certainly know one of its other faces: NTB, Tire Kingdom, Tuffy, Town Fair Tire, Express Oil Change & Tire Engineers, and Brakes Plus, plus a scattering of even regional banners like Action Gator, Jack Williams, and Dekalb Tire. Last year, Mavis absorbed Midas, a huge brand on its own. Mavis runs its flagship under two names—Mavis Discount Tire and Mavis Tires & Brakes—largely to sidestep a trademark tangle over the word “Discount.” Add Pep Boys and its roughly 800 locations, and Mavis becomes one of the largest service networks on the continent.

Driven Brands

Who owns it: Publicly traded, but controlled by Roark Capital, the private equity firm behind a huge chunk of American franchising.

If Mavis is the tire-and-service empire, Driven is its mirror image across oil changes, repair, and collision work. The portfolio, per the company’s filings, includes Take 5 Oil Change, Meineke, Maaco, CARSTAR, ABRA, Auto Glass Now, and 1-800-Radiator & A/C. That’s the quick-lube place, the muffler place, the paint-and-body place, and the windshield place—all under one Charlotte roof. It’s arguably the closest analog to what Mavis is building.

Monro

Who owns it: Publicly traded, headquartered in Rochester, New York.

Monro describes its holdings as a family of 16 regional brands, and that word—regional—is the whole game. You’ve got Monro Auto Service, Mr. Tire, Tire Choice, and a long tail of local names like Free Service Tire and McGee. Each one reads as a hometown operation. Each one rolls up to the same corporate parent in upstate New York. Monro’s footprint is heaviest across the East, so if you’re anywhere in the Northeast, you’ve probably handed your keys to Monro without knowing it.

Bridgestone Retail Operations

Who owns it: Bridgestone—the tire manufacturer itself.

This is the vertically integrated model, and it’s a different animal from the PE rollups. The company that makes the tires also owns the bays that install them. Bridgestone Retail Operations runs Firestone Complete Auto Care, Tires Plus, Hibdon Tires Plus, and Wheel Works, and calls itself the world’s largest company-owned auto-care chain. When you get Bridgestone or Firestone tires put on at a Firestone shop, the same corporation is on both ends of the transaction.

Fun fact: Bridgestone actually tried to buy Pep Boys in 2015, but lost the bidding war to Icahn (who’s now selling to Mavis). It’s all just big-money musical chairs.

Valvoline

Who owns it: Publicly traded (NYSE: VVV).

Here’s a fun wrinkle that says a lot about how this industry has splintered. Valvoline the oil-change chain and Valvoline the oil are no longer the same company. The retail service business—Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Great Canadian Oil Change, and the Express Care platform—is a pure-play service company now. The oil-manufacturing side was sold off to Saudi Aramco in 2023. So the brand on the sign and the jug of oil going into your engine can trace back to two entirely different owners.

Jiffy Lube

Who owns it: As of earlier this year, private equity—Monomoy Capital Partners.

And this is the freshest piece of the puzzle. Jiffy Lube—maybe the single most recognizable oil-change name in the country—just changed hands. In March 2026, Shell agreed to sell the roughly 2,000-location franchise network to Monomoy Capital Partners in a deal reported at about $1.3 billion. In July, the deal went through. Shell had owned it for two decades; now it’s moving to a PE consolidator. Which means the same year Pep Boys left Icahn for Mavis, Jiffy Lube left Shell for Monomoy. Two of the most familiar names in American car care, both trading a strategic corporate parent for a financial one, within months of each other.

What This Actually Means for You

None of this is inherently sinister. Jiffy Lube customers are there because they want to get in and out quickly, not because they want to have a special relationship with their mechanic or want complex work done on unique cars anyway. On the upside for most daily driver customers, scale can mean better pricing, more consistent warranties, and parts availability a true mom-and-pop can’t match.

When a local shop can get a part in 24 hours because it’s plugged into a national distribution network, that’s the machine working in your favor. Then again, fewer competitors means less consumer choice, which usually, ultimately, leads to a worse experience or higher prices.

But it’s worth being honest about what’s happening. The Pep Boys deal isn’t a one-off. It’s one more brick in a wall that a small number of companies—most of them steered by private equity—have been building for years. The signs out front still say a dozen different things. Behind them, the number of actual decision-makers keeps shrinking.

So the next time you pull into your favorite quick-lube lane, now you know who actually runs it. More and more often, the answer is: one of the six companies in this post.

Have insight into the auto service or aftermarket business? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post The Six Companies That Quietly Own Almost Every Auto Service Chain in America, Explained appeared first on The Drive.

Land Rover, the world’s quintessential SUV brand, has just trotted out the Range Rover GT. It’s a Range Rover. It’s a grand touring coupe. It’s a decade-old prophecy coming true—and the company says it’s about “long-haul refinement and all‑terrain capability.”

It doesn’t look all that dramatically different from the Range Rover Velar, but it certainly pushes the brand further from its off-road truck home base and into car territory. Here’s the pitch from JLR, specifically, Range Rover Managing Director Martin Limpert:

“The Range Rover GT will redefine the grand‑touring segment with the ability to deliver beautiful and engaging GT poise, proportions and long‑distance refinement while offering capabilities no conventional GT can match. We have spent the last few years working obsessively on the fundamentals of the GT formula, reinterpreted in a sophisticated, uniquely Range Rover way. The result is the most car‑like, yet unmistakably capable, Range Rover ever created, now possible on our electrified EMA architecture – complementing our existing powertrain portfolio to deliver a complete set of options for every customer need. Its blend of effortless EV performance, first‑class long‑haul refinement and all‑terrain capability is pure Range Rover; while its calming interior previews our vision of a modern grand tourer.”

So, yeah, to answer your first question: It’s an EV. It’s going to be the first electric Range Rover on the brand’s new EMA platform, made in Halewood, UK, alongside combustion and hybrid models. The Range Rover GT, which is reportedly now in its last stages of prototype testing, will launch as fully electric, but a hybrid model is already slated.

As for exactly how much range this Rover will have, or power, or any other spec, that’s TBA. I’m guessing they’re targeting 300-plus miles and a 3.0-ish 0 to 60 sprint. Expect intense acceleration and a high curb weight, like every other high-end luxury electric car.

It looks a little bit like the Jaguar Type 01—at least, it has similarly squinty eyes—but that rides on a different platform.

We’ve been hearing about “Range Rover maybe making a car” for over a decade. While looking around for context, I found an old article I wrote myself in 2016 about a rumor that Range Rover was going to rebadge a Jaguar to make its own coupe. That didn’t end up happening, of course. And while the Range Rover GT is officially called “car-like” with a “sleek silhouette and coupé proportions,” it’s really more like an aerodynamic crossover than an actual sedan. But it does seem closer to a Cadillac Lyriq than a Porsche Cayenne coupe or one of the other category-crossing German hunchback monsters.

I’m interested to see what JLR actually means by “all-terrain capability.” I guess if you combine the brand’s advanced traction management tech with four independent electric motors, you could make progress over awfully slippery terrain. But that low ride height is going to make any actual trail traversing pretty challenging.

The interior is very much in line with 2026 luxury design trends: Just big, expansive planes of nothingness punctuated by screens. “Sanctuary of calm,” is the company line, though I think it looks about as luxe as the bathroom in an airplane. The absence of detail is not good design; I don’t care how relentlessly Apple and Tesla and Gerry McGovern insist it is.

Objectively speaking, I reckon Range Rover’s actual customer base will dig this. Prototype vehicles are undertaking their final on‑road testing now, and JLR says it’ll share more info on the Range Rover GT later this year.

Got a tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com.

The post Range Rover is Making a Car appeared first on The Drive.

If you buy something, you should own it. If you own a car, you shouldn’t need permission to repair it. And if you don’t want to DIY, you should be free to choose where you take it for service—like your independent shop down the street, not just a corporate-owned dealership. That’s the real consumer issue at the heart of right to repair. It’s not just about dudes like me tinkering on old trucks in driveways; it’s about stopping automakers from turning your car into a secret scroll only the dealership can decipher. This affects every single car owner in America.

Quick Download on Right to Repair in 2026

Here’s the contextual download for anyone wondering why “right to repair” keeps surfacing in the news—and why it matters even if you never plan to touch a wrench.

• What it means: Right to repair is the principle that a company selling you a complex product has to make the information, tools, and parts needed to fix it available to you and to independent shops—not just to its own dealers. In plain terms, you should be able to get your car fixed without the manufacturer’s permission.
• Why it’s back: Carmakers and the aftermarket struck a truce in 2014, but that deal predates the era of the always-connected, data-collecting car. Automakers have since found new leverage the old agreement never addressed: proprietary software and the wireless “telematics” data your car generates.
• The current fight: A watered-down version of right-to-repair legislation has advanced in the House, but it does little more than write the old handshake agreement into law—while leaving the actual modern battleground, telematics and software access, untouched.
• The misdirection: The Trump administration issued a June 2026 memo pitched as “freedom to fix,” but it targets only emissions parts—a narrow, deregulation-flavored slice of the issue that sidesteps the real problem of automakers paywalling your car’s own data.
• Why you should care: Whether you wrench in your driveway or drop your car at the shop, you and your mechanic are on the same team here. Neither of you wants your car’s diagnostics locked behind the manufacturer’s firewall, because that’s what turns routine repairs into dealership-only errands at dealership prices.

‘Right to Repair’ Explained

Right to repair means companies that make complex products (like cars) have to make the maintenance information for those products publicly available. Put another way, you’ve got to be able to fix a car without direct permission from the automaker.

This was tenuously settled about 12 years ago. Car companies pretty much pinkie-promised they’d keep letting aftermarket parts makers and independent mechanics exist, as long as those folks stopped trying to protect their livelihoods with regulations. That handshake is now buckling under the weight of technology it was never written to cover.

Why Is This in the News Now?

The right-to-repair boat is rocking again because—guess what—car technology is a lot different than it was in 2014. Today’s automakers have new ways to weasel out of that pesky agreement with the aftermarket: proprietary computer wizardry and leveraging consumer data privacy against the consumer.

The 2014 agreement didn’t say anything about the telemetry and data a car could collect—it wasn’t really a thing yet. Heck, Tesla was barely a thing at that point. Now automakers have realized they can effectively hide diagnostic abilities behind a wall of proprietary data. Data that independent mechanics, let alone DIYers, could be locked out of.

Today’s cars are heavily computerized. They collect a huge amount of data, and they’re deeply, systematically interconnected—a burned-out taillight might cause your cruise control to fail. That’s not inherently bad engineering, but it does create the context for automakers to be all, “Sorry, you can’t change your wiper blades without the wiper telemetry logs, and those have to be kept secret, so you’ll have to come to the dealership and present your monthly wiper blade subscription code at the kiosk.”

I don’t want that future, because it sucks. Independent mechanics don’t want it because it will nuke their businesses. Automakers really want it because it could tap a fresh keg of what we hold most sacred in capitalism: recurring revenue.

How We Got Here

The Massachusetts Automotive Right to Repair Act was the first big-deal law built around this idea in America, and it’s basically where the right-to-repair saga as we’ve been tracking it begins. Massachusetts legally required vehicle manufacturers to give independent shops and car owners access to the exact same diagnostic tools and repair information available to authorized dealerships. That didn’t mean it had to be easy—a dealer-grade scan tool can cost as much as a decent used car—but the point is, you can buy one.

In 2014, a network of automakers responded with a voluntary, non-binding agreement—the R2R Memorandum of Understanding—that took the thrust of the Massachusetts law and extended it nationwide. In exchange, the aftermarket agreed to stop pushing for right-to-repair legislation in other states and at the federal level. It was explicitly framed at the time as decisively ending the industry’s long-running right-to-repair debate. But of course, when it comes to technology and policy, nothing stays still forever.

Worth remembering: that was purely a trade agreement between commercial entities—voters and consumers had no say in it. On the manufacturer side were the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers (since merged into today’s Alliance for Automotive Innovation). On the aftermarket side were the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (now the Auto Care Association) and the Coalition for Automotive Repair Equality—that’s the world of AutoZone, Advance Auto Parts, and NAPA. The same two camps are squared off today. And assuming you’re not an executive at a car company, it should be pretty clear the aftermarket is the side aligned with you as a car owner.

Who Is For and Against Right To Repair

Arguments in Favor of Right to Repair: The Aftermarket and Consumer Position

• You own the car, so you should control its data and its repairs. The foundational argument is about ownership. If the vehicle is yours, the information needed to fix it—and the data it generates—shouldn’t be the manufacturer’s to withhold.
• Competition keeps repair costs down. When independent shops can access the same tools and information as dealers, owners have somewhere else to go. Lock that out, and you hand automakers a repair monopoly, which is a straight line to higher prices.
• The cybersecurity objection doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A bipartisan group of senators, citing FTC findings and independent cybersecurity experts, has argued the industry’s security concerns are largely a pretext—especially since the same automakers profit from selling reams of vehicle data to insurers and third parties, often without clear consumer consent.
• Modern repairs are about information, not tools. The real chokepoint has moved from physical access to software authorization. Fixing today’s cars increasingly requires telematics data, calibration procedures, and manufacturer software—exactly the stuff being left out of the current bill.
• This isn’t a niche hobbyist issue. Right to repair polls well across the political spectrum; surveys have found overwhelming public support for requiring manufacturers to make repair information and parts more accessible. Most people intuitively grasp that they should get to choose who fixes their car.

Arguments Opposing Right to Repair: The OEM Position

• Open data access is a cybersecurity risk. Automakers argue that piping telematics and vehicle-system access to any third party widens the attack surface for bad actors, and that a connected car is a safety-critical system, not a smartphone. Ford CEO Jim Farley has publicly made the case that consumers shouldn’t be repairing their own vehicles for exactly these safety and security reasons.
• Repair procedures are protected intellectual property. OEMs contend that proprietary diagnostic software and repair methods are hard-won IP they’re entitled to protect, not information they should be forced to hand to competitors.
• Modern safety systems demand precision. Miscalibrated ADAS components—the cameras, radar, and sensors behind automatic braking and lane-keeping—can fail dangerously. Automakers argue that dealer-controlled procedures ensure these life-safety systems are serviced correctly.
• Consumer data needs protecting. The industry frames tight control over vehicle data partly as data stewardship, arguing that loosening access could expose sensitive personal information—a concern regulators are, in fairness, increasingly scrutinizing across the whole industry.

The catch, which critics are quick to point out: every one of these concerns, however legitimate on its face, maps almost perfectly onto outcomes that funnel more repair work back to dealerships.

Where Things Stand Now

As of summer 2026, here’s the actual state of play. The standalone REPAIR Act (H.R. 1566)—the bill the aftermarket and independent-repair groups actually wanted—has been parked in the House Energy and Commerce Committee since early 2025. Then, on May 21, 2026, that committee held a wide-ranging markup and folded a narrowed version of the right-to-repair language into a bigger vehicle: the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026 (H.R. 7389), which cleared committee on a 48-1 roll call vote.

But what passed is toothless. Committee members stripped out the broader provisions on telematics and direct wireless access to vehicle data. The bill doesn’t require automakers to give owners or independent repairers access to wirelessly transmitted vehicle data. Instead, it essentially codifies the 2014 memo—applying it to vehicles under 14,000 pounds (every passenger car and SUV, even the electric Hummers) and empowering the FTC to impose civil penalties for violations. Making an old handshake enforceable isn’t nothing. But it’s a decade-old handshake.

CAR Coalition executive director Justin Rzepka put it bluntly, arguing that codifying a 2014 MOU does nothing to expand consumer choice and instead hands automakers a costly repair monopoly. His point: that old agreement doesn’t cover ADAS sensors, cameras, radar, calibration, telematics, or wireless data—all of it critical to maintaining a modern car. Tellingly, even the REPAIR Act’s own sponsor, Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL), has said the committee version doesn’t capture the original intent and that he plans to pursue changes on the floor. When the person whose name is on the bill says the bill misses the point, that’s the story.

What Happens Next

H.R. 7389 heads to the full House—all 435 members—but not as a standalone bill. The plan is to pair it with the BUILD America 250 Act (H.R. 8870), the five-year, $580 billion surface transportation reauthorization better known as “the highway bill.” The hard deadline driving everything is September 30, 2026, when current highway and transit authorities expire. Leaders in both parties want it on the president’s desk before then, so realistically we’re looking at a House floor vote this summer, then the Senate (working on its own version, complicated by the midterms), then reconciliation before the September 30 wall. No floor date is locked in yet; committee chair Brett Guthrie has committed to continued negotiations on the right-to-repair language before any vote.

The Politics Behind Right to Repair

Right to repair has a uniquely bipartisan appeal because it supports both citizens and small businesses. It’s a particularly interesting issue for the Trump administration to preside over. As both the president’s detractors and his supporters would agree, the Trump brand is all about business-doing and money-making—but it also leans hard on celebrating blue-collar life and self-sufficiency. Right to repair drives a very visible wedge between those two ideas.

After a recent meeting with auto industry executives, President Trump indicated he was down with DIYers, referencing a pardon for somebody who “got seven years in jail” for “fixing a car.” That framing was never substantiated; the likeliest referent is Troy Lake, who was pardoned after seven months—not seven years—of a 366-day sentence for illegal pollution-increasing modifications on diesel trucks.

Then, on June 29, 2026, the president issued a memorandum—not legislation, not even an executive order—titled “Lowering the Cost of Living by Promoting the Freedom to Fix.” It doesn’t enact anything. It directs EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to make it easier for car owners to use aftermarket emissions parts and repairs. And here’s the sleight of hand: this is emissions-parts right to repair, not information, tooling, and software right to repair. The essential fight—the one about automakers paywalling your own car’s diagnostic data—is about access to that data, plus the manufacturer software, tools, and telematics that go with it. The memo waves at the marquee and leaves the actual arena empty.

So what’s a car owner actually supposed to do with all this? For now, less than you’d hope, but more than nothing. H.R. 7389 isn’t law yet, there’s no locked-in floor date, and the right-to-repair language is still being negotiated—which means the window where a phone call to your representative actually lands is open right now, not after the September 30 deadline forces everyone’s hand. If you want a proxy fighting on your behalf, it’s mainly the aftermarket coalition—the Auto Care Association, the CAR Coalition, SEMA, and others—not the folks who build the cars. And when the real telematics fight comes back around, because it will, it’ll help to already understand that this was never about guys in driveways. It’s about who gets to read your car’s mind.

Got a tip? Send us a note at tips@thedrive.com

The post Why Drivers and Mechanics Are United Against Automakers: ‘Right To Repair’ Explained appeared first on The Drive.

There’s a “no car listing fee” promo deal going on at eBay Motors right now until the end of the month. So if you were thinking about unloading a vehicle, this could be a good avenue for you.

I’ve never bought a whole car on eBay, but I have bought and sold all kinds of other stuff. It does feel safer and more legit than Facebook Marketplace. Having eBay Motors’ buyer and seller protections feels good once you start getting into used cars that cost more than a few grand. You can read about eBay Motors’ Secure Purchase protections here.

The main downside of selling on eBay is its steep fee structure. Fortunately, eBay Motors doesn’t charge a “final value fee” to car sellers as it does for other items. For listing, you normally have to pay about $34 to list a car under $15,000 or $79 for something over that price. But from now until the end of the month, you can skip that and list for free.

Here’s the link to eBay’s car listing promo page.

Word to the wise: There are still a couple of specific scenarios where you might still get hit with a fee to keep in mind:

• Deposit Processing Fee: If you require the buyer to pay an upfront deposit through eBay’s checkout to secure the vehicle (which is very common), eBay charges a 2.8% processing fee on the deposit amount. For example, if you require a $500 deposit, eBay will keep $14.00, and you will receive $486.00.
• Optional Upgrades: The promotion specifically applies to the base listing fee. If you choose to add premium optional upgrades to your listing (beyond what is included in the standard 40-photo listing package) or if you have standard Store subscription fees, those are not covered by the discount.

Here’s the full rundown of official terms and conditions, directly from eBay:

How to redeem your promotion:

• 100% discount is eligible when you list an item from categories: Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Powersports, Boats, and Other Vehicles & Trailers categories.
• Begin your listing, and the fee displayed is waived before posting your item.
• Maximum discount is $79 per listing and applies only to the listing fee. Subscription fees are not eligible for the discount. 
• Offer valid for all registered eBay users using Sell Your Item flow. 3rd party or other tools are not eligible. 
• Promotion may be used for unlimited listings during the promotional period.
• Offer available only to users registered in the United States.

Additional Terms & Conditions:

Promotion can be used for 100% discount off the listing price of eligible items within Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Powersports, Boats, and Other Vehicles & Trailers categories, maximum discount is $79 off per listing. Promotion may be used for unlimited listings per eBay account.

An eligible item(s) on eBay.com are from the categories Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Powersports, Boats, and Other Vehicles & Trailers categories. The Promotion can be used on an unlimited basis per eBay account up until 11:59 PM Pacific Time on July 31, 2026 or while supplies last. Promotion redemption dependent on availability and, as such, may be revoked at any time without notice and at eBay’s sole discretion. Only eBay members with registered and shipping address in selected countries can receive the discount under the promotion. The transfer to eBay users or listings with registration address other than selected countries shall be classified as a violation of this T&C. Discount applies to the listing fee (excluding shipping, handling, taxes) of an eligible item(s) on eBay.com. Any unused difference between the discount amount, as shown on the Promotion, in a single transaction will be forfeited.

Promotion is subject to U.S. laws, void where prohibited, not redeemable for cash, has no face value, and cannot be combined with any other Coupon, Gift card, or Gift Certificate. eBay may cancel, amend, or revoke the Coupon at any time.

The post List Your Car on eBay Motors for Free Until the End of July appeared first on The Drive.

The Jensen Interceptor was a long and low British touring car in the 1950s. But most of you probably remember it with the funky shooting-brake design it had in the ’60s and ’70s, if you remember it at all. At the beginning of this year, a Jensen Interceptor comeback was announced. Today, it looks like it’s made some progress, promising to debut its design as an analog (yay!), V8 (yay!), track-only (boo.) model.

Here are the key nuggets on what’s being called the “Jensen Interceptor GTX” from the press release:

“Developed as an enhanced prototype build, the Interceptor GTX will establish the foundations for several future Interceptor variants, including roadgoing models and track-focused cars.”

“While the car heralds a new era and proudly bears the Jensen Interceptor name, the Interceptor GTX is not a ‘restomod’ nor a ‘continuation’ of any previous Jensen model. Entirely new from the ground up, it features a striking, contemporary, hand-built aluminium body, an aluminium chassis, and a supercharged V8 engine, resulting in the ultimate analogue driving experience.”

This GTX variant has reportedly been designed, engineered, and hand-built in the UK. How many of them there will be, and how much they’ll cost, is still TBA.

If you’re following this thread with some confusion, well, so am I. The original Interceptors were all GTs, not sports cars. The silhouette the brand has been showing off definitely looks more “touring” than “raw performance.” A track model doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. That is, until you factor in the regulatory aspects. Building a track car sidesteps all the hardest parts of car manufacturing—like bringing it up to safety, emissions, and other compliance standards for road cars.

So, while I’m sure the people selling it would never spin it this way, I think the only reason for a “track-only” Interceptor to come into existence is so the company can put something, anything, out and in motion.

I don’t mean to kick dirt at these guys, though—it would be awesome if Jensen really could bring a small-batch V8, manual, touring car to life, even in small-scale production. And the teaser silhouette images it’s shared so far actually look great. And while an old Interceptor would be a pretty dumb platform to build a track car with, Jensen’s new management is adamant that this is not the revival of the old Interceptor.

Consider me officially wishing them luck.

Have you spent much time in an old Interceptor? I’d love to hear about it. Hit me up at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post New Jensen Interceptor Found a Shortcut to Production: It’s Track-Only, for Now appeared first on The Drive.

Welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive’s morning automotive news roundup, bringing you the biggest headlines from around the globe.

The Downshift sums up stories in short blurbs with links to the source for the full report. Here’s the news worth catching up on for Thursday, July 16, 2026.

A driving school (normal driving, not racing) is using VR headsets to better train its trainers, blurring the line between classroom and in-car training. [Reuters]

Footage from the cockpit of a train plowing through Canadian wildfires is absolutely horrifying. [AP News]

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is getting $6,300 cheaper—the 2026 model starts at $61,500. [Car and Driver]

Autocar test-drove a prototype of the Range Rover Sport EV, which is reportedly “coming soon.” [Autocar]

Road & Track got to test-drive an odd two-seat cargo/commercial variant of the Toyota Land Cruiser [Road & Track]

Australians shared owner experiences and impressions of BYDs, as the Chinese electric cars are soaring in popularity Down Under. [Drive.com.au]

Infiniti QX80 Red Sport, the brand’s upcoming huge high-performance SUV, is being delayed so it can be better dialed in to take on rivals. Specifically, Mercedes-AMG. [Automotive News]

Got a tip or feedback for TDS? Reach out to tips@thedrive.com

The post VR Is Helping Driving Schools Train Better Instructors: TDS appeared first on The Drive.

The Morgan Supersport, a compact sporty car with a sleek and delightful new take on the British company’s ye olde motorcar aesthetic, has been confirmed for the US market. It will have a smaller engine than it ships with in Europe, but on the plus side, it has a much cooler-looking shifter than the one we’d seen before.

The Supersport debuted last March. It has a fresh look without straying from Morgan’s distinctively anachronistic signature design (long hood, round lights, you get it). You can enjoy that scrolling through this article—I’ll drop Morgan’s whole studio gallery in below. The Euro model we saw was powered by a BMW B58—a proven and exceptional turbo straight-six (same engine employed by the Toyota Supra, among other things). The US one gets a bit of a downgrade to the BMW B46—a single-turbo inline four-cylinder.

I actually own a version of this powertrain (B46 plus ZF eight-speed) in my BMW 330 wagon. While it’s not ripping fast, it’s definitely not slow—and a Morgan is a heck of a lot lighter than my all-wheel-drive longroof. So I’m optimistic the Supersport will still be fun to drive with about 250 horsepower instead of 330 (though the name now seems a little overly ambitious).

Morgan dropped a huge studio gallery, which you can swipe through here to see the car in different configurations:

As Morgan shared in a press release, the car’s been homologated for sale in the United States under the Replica Vehicle legislation established by the FAST Act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act). The company states:

“The legislation enables manufacturers to produce replica vehicles based on models sold not less than 25 years ago and allows Morgan to sell up to 325 qualifying vehicles annually within the market. Following an extensive program of engineering, validation and federal homologation, Supersport has been approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for sale in the United States. US specification vehicles are powered by Morgan’s approved BMW B46 TwinPower Turbo engine, paired with an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission, providing a powertrain package developed specifically to meet applicable federal emissions standards.”

So, yeah, sounds like the car’s allowed into America specifically with this powertrain. Pricing for the US is still TBA, though the B58-powered Euro spec Supersport is listed for about $130,000 at current conversion rates. I would expect the four-cylinder Americanized version to be a little less. I think anywhere in the $100,000 neighborhood is a nice price for a truly hand-built car, even if it lives in kind of an unusual middle ground between sporty and grand-touring. Maybe it’s a “tiny touring” car? You buy a Morgan for the look and the vibes, not the speed specs, anyway.

And I am glad to see the OEM BMW shifter, as seen in the initial photos of the car last year, has been replaced with a bespoke unit. I mean, it’s fine, good-looking, even, in BMWs, but kind of jarring in the otherwise unique and old-world elegance of a Morgan cockpit. The clean knob Morgan has come up with fits the interior much more appropriately.

Morgan prides itself on coachbuilding every car it sells—that means limited quantities and maximal customization. The boutique automaker says fewer than 50 US-market build slots are available for the year.

“Every aluminum body is handcrafted over a traditional ash wood frame before being seamlessly integrated with
the lightweight CXV-Generation bonded-aluminum platform and its advanced suspension, braking, and electronic
systems,” the company shared in its release.

“More than 60% of the aluminum used throughout the chassis and body is sourced from recycled material, reflecting Morgan’s continued focus on responsible manufacturing. The cockpit combines natural materials with modern production techniques. Scottish leather, sourced as a by-product of the food and agricultural industries, is used sparingly throughout the interior. While advanced laser scanning technology ensures exceptional consistency, every hide is individually trimmed using traditional techniques and hand-finished by Morgan’s skilled craftspeople. By the nature of its coach-built construction, natural materials are used thoughtfully, resulting in minimal waste.”

Morgan’s design language is definitely not for everybody, but if you’re into cars, you’ve got to appreciate what they’re doing out there at Pickersleigh Road.

Got a story tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com.

The post The Morgan Supersport Lost Two Cylinders To Become US-Legal appeared first on The Drive.

Thinking about getting a dashcam, or just want to give your car a little spruce-up for short money? Here are some good deals we found for you this week.

33% Off: Phone-Synced Dash Cam

See It

33% off: ROVE R2 Dash Cam (on sale for $80.39)

27% off: REDTIGER 4K Dash Cam with STARVIS 2 sensor (on sale for $109.99)

40% off: 70mai A810 Lite 4K Dash Cam (on sale for $89.98)

11% off: Chemical Guys Total Interior Cleaner & Protectant (on sale for $17.88)

5% off: Chemical Guys Swift Wipe Sprayable Waterless Car Wash Spray, huge 128 oz bottle. (on sale for $52.24)

Prices were accurate when we wrote this, but might change. We’ll update this list with new products and deals if they catch our attention!

The post Cheap Dash Cams Deals and More Car Accessories on Sale Right Now appeared first on The Drive.

Ominous Israeli surveillance tech is now being deployed on American roads. FalcoNet, brought to you by a company called Cognyte (Israel’s Palantir rival), secretly tracks people by intercepting the connection between your phone and the nearest cell tower. The idea is that you can strap this bad boy to a helicopter, backpack, or Chevy Tahoe and gobble up everybody’s data as you cruise around. It’s already in use in Florida. This year, Texas State Police bought a little fleet of FalcoNet-equipped SUVs for just under $4.5 million. I found the purchase receipt and FalcoNet user guide to learn a little more about it.

In March of 2026, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Criminal Investigations Division asked for approval to spend $4,487,500 on a Cognyte surveillance setup. Actually, what they requested was “approval for emergency purchase necessary to protect the safety and welfare of state personnel and property. Delaying the procurement process could result in unacceptable safety risks to personnel and compromise operational readiness.”

The request memo is chock-full of urgency and dramatic language—peppered with terms like “emergency” and “immediate.” But no specifics are mentioned. “Any delay in procuring would compromise employee safety, public safety, operational readiness, and overall mission success,” the memo states, without saying how or why this brand-new, very expensive technology is suddenly essential to operations.

Naturally, it wasn’t just $4.5 million for four 2026 Chevy Tahoes, though the SUVs themselves were still bizarrely expensive at $150,000 a piece. Here’s how the purchase order breaks down:

• FalcoNet Core System (x4): $2,850,000
• Unlicensed FalcoNet core system: $200,000
• Delta 5G Perpetual license for FalcoNet V (x4): $280,000
• 2026 Chevrolet Tahoe (x4): $600,000
• FalcoNet Backpack core V2 – 6 x BTS (2G/3G/4G/5G): $355,500
• Flexable [sic] antenna kit: $27,000
• Cognyte PA Ranger: $105,000
• Unlicensed FalcoNet Backpack core V2 – 6 x BTS (2G/3G/4G/5G): $70,000
• Total PO Amount: $4,487,500

So, yeah, that’s how (and why) Texas police spent $4.5 million on four Tahoes. They’re bristling with really expensive peeping equipment.

As for the FalcoNet system itself, the core principle people are rightfully freaking out about is the fact that it can hoover up private data from unsuspecting people en masse and in secret. I don’t consider myself a person with anything to hide, but I still hate this with a passion. Just the other day, a member of our very own staff was wrongfully detained by corporate-controlled cop tech!

And as Cybernews pointed out, the legality of such things is still questionable. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled (Chatrie v United States) “that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in location data revealing their movements, and that even short-term tracking of that kind counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment.”

We have been and will continue to cover the rapidly evolving corpo-surveillance state we’re all driving around in, because it affects infrastructure and road travel (driving) in such a major way.

But we can also get into the specifics of this technology, too, since I found the FalcoNet user guide and thought you might be curious about how it works exactly. GM has a standard cop loadout for the Tahoe: Tahoe Police Pursuit Vehicles come with a V8, big brakes, robust suspension, secondary battery, and 250-amp alternator.

The FalcoNet system itself breaks down thusly:

• Dimensions & Form Factor: The core module measures 563mm x 200mm x 86mm (designed as a 2U half 19” rack drawer) and weighs 8kg.
• Hardware Interface: The module features RJ45 LAN ports, a 4-way Amphenol Power connector, SMA panel connectors for GPS and clock synchronization, and QN-Type connectors for RF input and antenna output.
• Power: It requires a DC power input of 24v to 36v, drawing about 35 watts at idle and 260 watts at full power transmission.
• Kits: Government purchase orders (such as one from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement) show that the system is modular and sold in “Deployment Kits” packaged in SKB Pelican cases containing the core Software Defined Radio (SDR) base stations, power distribution units, and directional antenna kits

From the outside, I suspect these Tahoes will look pretty regular. Standard antenna-hiding tactics include making a slightly raised false roof, hiding them in what looks like a Thule ski box, or using little pucks. But for $4.5 million, I’m sure Cognyte will be able to make these SUVs look as scary or nondescript as Texas DPS wants.

Got a story tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com.

The post How Texas Police Spent $4.5 Million on Four Chevy Tahoes appeared first on The Drive.

Free batteries are a big bonus when we’re talking about Milwaukee tools—a 2 Ah lithium-ion battery is normally $119. Get one thrown in for $0 with a Milwaukee orbital finishing sander or heat gun (both highly useful!) during Ace Hardware‘s summer promo. There are also deals going on from Craftsman, Yeti, and more for the next few weeks.

Check out the Milwaukee free-battery-with-tool deals at Ace’s site here.

Milwaukee Packout modular storage systems are being deeply discounted, too—get $50 off those when you spend $250, or $100 off after you spend $350 (which is very easy to do because they ain’t cheap).

Many Milwaukee hand tools are also on sale at Ace right now—see that list here.

And if you didn’t see the red tool you wanted on either of those lists, you’ll find even more Milwaukee deals and discounts at Ace Hardware here.

While you’re shopping at Ace, there are two more sweet scores I want to put on your radar: You can get 46% off a Craftsman 1500-psi pressure washer (save $250!) and 17% off a very cool Yeti soft-sided cooler (save $41) this summer, too. Check it out today while there are still good colors in stock.

The post These Milwaukee Tools Come With Free Batteries at Ace Hardware This Month appeared first on The Drive.

Just a quick PSA for those of you who park outside and put your cars under a cover—the wrong one for your climate can actually be a lot worse than nothing at all. I accidentally turned my old International Scout into a little sauna for a few days—not something I want any of you to experience!

Last winter, I kept my old Scout in a barn under a weighted blanket-style cover from CoverSeal. Its main purpose is to prevent mice from crawling into the vehicle. A heavy skirt around the outside effectively holds the cover to the ground, eliminating the need for straps. It worked great indoors and kept the critters out.

This summer, I’ve been parking the truck next to my house. I’ve been working on changing its real leaf springs (a job that got delayed due to me ordering the wrong parts, oops) so I threw the heavy CoverSeal cover on it before a big rain storm.

Well, it kept the top of the vehicle dry, but not the bottom. The weighted skirt that seemed to keep mice away couldn’t stop rainwater from sneaking in, causing the area under the truck to turn into a swamp. Quite the opposite of a healthy home for an old, rust-prone truck. Luckily, it hadn’t been sitting like that long, but jeeze, when I saw how mucky the dirt was under the truck, I was distressed to say the least.

I was pretty surprised at how quickly the area under the sealed cover became a swamp. Like, I saw an actual toad hanging out with a worm down there. I guess they’re even more creative than mice when it comes to extreme ingress.

Anyway, this experience is a great illustration of how differently different car covers behave, so I figured I’d share it with the class. This CoverSeal unit was great for indoor storage and rodent mitigation, but clearly does not exhaust moisture anywhere near quickly enough to be working outside in a New York summer.

So when you’re car cover shopping, make sure you take some time to match the product with the environment you’ll be subjecting it to.

Got a story tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com.

The post How The Wrong Car Cover Can Cause Rust appeared first on The Drive.

This weekend, reports started circulating that legendary tuning house Hondata has been acquired by Engineered Performance Technologies. That’s the same private equity-backed parent company that owns Cobb Tuning, AutoMeter, Ecutek, and other big names in the car modding world.

Hondata Acquisition News

On Saturday, I found what looks like a leaked press release draft on a Honda Type R parts Facebook Group page stating, “Engineering Performance Technologies (EPT) is proud to announce the acquisition of Hondata Inc., the premier innovator of engineered software and hardware solutions for the Honda and Acura performance market.”

What’s weird is, the real company is called Engineered, not Engineering. Also odd is the fact that no official communications appear to have been issued by Hondata or EPT itself (I did send some notes, and will update this story if I hear back). Hence why I’m thinking it’s a leaked draft. That said, this feels way too specific for somebody to make up. So I imagine either somebody shared the release before they were supposed to (Hondata’s retailer HA Motorsports’ staff is on summer break for another week as I’m writing this), or I just read an AI-mangled version of a release that’s buried on an industry-facing press wire page.

Anyway, if we’re deciding to take the release at face value, here’s the nugget you will be interested in if you’re interested at all:

“This acquisition ensures that Hondata will have access to expanded corporate resources, state-of-the-art research facilities, and deeper manufacturing capabilities. Customers, dealers, and tuners can expect the same specialized support they have relied on for years, alongside accelerated development for future platforms, CANFlex systems, and next-generation software features.”

So far, it sounds like it’ll be an expansion of business as usual, which would be great. Though any time private equity gets involved in anything, I tend to get a little nervous. More on that later.

Quick Context

Here’s a speed run of context you need to fully appreciate today’s Hondata news:

Summer 2013, Avante Capital Partners (also called Avante Mezzanine Partners) and Promus Equity Partners bought the well-established car gauge company AutoMeter and started to build its own little aftermarket car-parts empire around it. Engineered Performance Technologies (EPT) came online as the corporate umbrella company to stand in as an AutoMeter parent and, soon, manage other brands in the space.

AutoMeter had actually already been owned by another investment firm at that time, with its own network of subsidiary companies in its orbit (Stack, Ltd., Dedenbear Products, and ProParts LLC making NASCAR’s Spek-Pro gauges).

In 2014, EPT acquired Cobb Tuning, best known for Subaru computer tuning, but it now has applications for a huge range of cars. That gave EPT a foothold in the all-important ECU tuning world.

A few years later, Ecutek, a British ECU tuning outfit, was bought, too, giving the parent company a foothold in Europe.

Last year, EPT picked up PRL Motorsports, which makes hardware (intakes, intercoolers, and other such things, primarily for Hondas).

So, with all that in mind, it makes a lot of sense for this Engineered Performance Technologies entity to go after Hondata, a major authority on Honda ECU tuning.

With this move, EPT has effectively built two parallel empires. In the Subaru camp, it has the software (Cobb) and the hardware (GrimmSpeed). Now, in the Honda/Acura camp, it has completed the same puzzle with the software (Hondata) and the hardware (PRL Motorsports).

What’s Next for the Enthusiast Aftermarket?

Best-case scenario, Hondata gets a cash infusion and infrastructure bump, allowing the brand to expand its offerings without dropping support for existing products. Worst case, the brand gets gutted of talent and hobbles along, trading on name recognition for as long as its new owners can squeeze money out of it. The reality will probably be a bit of both.

As for the car-modding business as a whole … it’s complicated.

Flatirons Tuning hosted a podcast recently with Justin Grimm from Overtake (formerly GrimmSpeed) and Dan Hurwitz from Mach V Motorsports to discuss private equity in the automotive aftermarket. You can check that out here:

Well, specifically, their conversation was about the consumer-facing performance aftermarket. (In auto industry speak, “aftermarket” often is just describing non-name-brand replacement parts like the brake pads, control arms, and sway bar end links you grab from your local auto parts store or Amazon.)

Grimm is particularly well-versed to discuss this because his tuning company, GrimmSpeed, was sold to private investors circa 2019 (it was spun up into an aggregator called Aftermarket Performance Group). Grimm himself was fired shortly after, and details of that situation came to light last year when he did a Reddit AMA.

Today’s version of GrimmSpeed is owned by, guess who, the same company we’ve been talking about for most of this story—EPT.

While the whole enthusiast-focused aftermarket is too big for any one investment firm to eat (for now), I think it’s fair to assume this trend of consolidation will continue. Aftermarket parts companies are juicy snacks for PE—they tend to have a strong brand name, loyal customers, and opportunities for corner-cutting (sorry, I mean cost-cutting) that a prideful founder might ignore but a corporate overlord would be inclined to exploit.

We’re still a long way from the car-enthusiast aftermarket being owned by one dime-squeezing megacorp, but I generally am not into consolidation and corporatization. My concern is that fewer players in the space will lead to homogenized products, and ultimately, higher prices and crappier quality.

Here’s hoping Hondata keeps good people in charge and continues its great work.

The post Another Important Tuner Car Brand Has Been Grabbed by Private Equity appeared first on The Drive.

The Honda CB650R E-Clutch is a spectacular vehicle with a beautiful balance of traits. It’s approachable and modern while still being soulful. Lively, but not intimidating. You can set the clutch to automatic, but shifting remains your responsibility. This is a great bike for new riders or old heads looking for new tech that makes the ride better, not just easier. For me, specifically, riding a Honda E-Clutch bike was nothing less than life-changing.

We don’t publish motorcycle reviews here all that often, but this story is for anyone with a casual interest in vehicles. If you’ve never ridden a motorbike at all, here’s the only bit of technical context you need:

• Pretty much all motorcycles have a sequential manual transmission configured the same way
  • The clutch is the left handlebar lever
  • The shifter is a rod you move up (upshift) or down (downshift) with your left foot
• Braking is done on the right side
  • The right handlebar lever actuates the front brake
  • The right foot pedal actuates the rear brake

Here’s a visual:

View this post on Instagram

Motorcycling With a Crippled Hand

I’m uniquely equipped to appreciate an auto-clutch motorcycle because my left hand is crippled. It’s a long and sad story. The short version is that I flipped a UTV in deep wilderness, and as I tumbled, my paw got caught between the Earth and the vehicle’s roll cage. Would you believe I was supposed to get married a few hours later that same day? As a matter of fact, I still did—my wife and I were officially hitched in a hospital hallway minutes before I was wheeled into surgery.

In the year following that crash, the only thing I was riding was an endless carousel of medical visits. I resisted selling the bike I owned at the time, a Yamaha WR250R with completely custom suspension tuning, thinking it could be my motivation to get my hand’s functionality back. But as months went by, doctor bills piled up while clutch-pulling didn’t seem to be getting any closer. The Yammie got sold, and motorcycles were forced off my list of loves.

That crash happened eight years ago now. Today, few seem to notice that my left hand is a little gnarled and missing a pinkie. Less luckily, I still have severely limited dexterity and strength. There’s also a distant hum of pain I can never completely muffle.

But I promised this would be the “short version,” so let’s get back to bikes. I pretty much hadn’t ridden a proper motorcycle since 2018—I think my last loaner was a Honda Rebel 500. So, throwing a leg over this CB650R and zooming down my driveway was a pretty emotional experience. The craziest thing is, by the time I’d ridden from my garage to my mailbox, I felt at home on a steel horse again. And I was instantly convinced that Honda’s E-Clutch is awesome.

What is Honda’s E-Clutch?

Practically speaking, the Honda E-Clutch lets you have a full and proper manual-transmission motorcycle, except you don’t have to touch the clutch. You still shift and fully manage the throttle, but clutching is optional. Yes—optional, it’s not removed. If you want to use the clutch, it still works fully manually, and you can deactivate the E-Clutch in the CB650R’s settings menu. It’s slightly annoying to find, but as we’ll discuss in this post, I doubt most owners will want to turn it off often. E-Clutch functionality is on “auto” by default.

A no-touch-clutch motorcycle is not a new idea. There are aftermarket auto-clutches (like Rekluse), and there are even some dual-clutch automatic motorcycles now (Honda’s big with that, too). Honda’s E-Clutch came out in 2024 on the CB650R and the sportier-looking CBR650R—all this to say, it’s been on the road for years now, but it’s new enough that many people still aren’t familiar with it.

How Does E-Clutch Work?

While the programming and engineering that make E-Clutch work are complex, conceptually it’s pretty simple: The clutch has two input methods. It can be controlled by a hand lever or by a computerized lever. With the E-Clutch off, the rider directly controls clutch engagement with the lever, just like on any other motorcycle. With E-Clutch active, the rider indirectly controls when the clutch is used through their regular riding behavior—the bike’s ECU extrapolates when to engage the clutch based on the wealth of information it has from a raft of sensors.

In practice, having E-Clutch means you never have to pull the lever, even at a stop. You can idle in first without clutching in. Just remember that you’re in gear before you go to rev the bike—you can unintentionally bump yourself forward if you forget you’re not in neutral! Luckily, there’s a big ol’ gear indicator on the dash.

E-Clutch Reference Material

If you want to go really deep on E-Clutch technology and development, Honda has published some cool cutaway diagrams, a tech briefing, and a great interview with the engineers who brought it to life.

Pricing, Value, and Rivals

Motorcycles are an amazing price-to-performance deal compared to cars. A brand-new CB650R E-Clutch lists at $9,299, including the destination fee, placing it squarely between the larger and smaller models in Honda’s lineup. E-Clutch isn’t an add-on you select at the dealership; it’s baked into a few Honda models. In this middleweight standard-moto category, there are a few alternatives that I haven’t ridden, but we can compare their specs.

The Kawasaki Z650 S is considerably cheaper at about $7,700. Other rivals include the Triumph Trident 660, Suzuki GSX-8S, and Yamaha MT-07, which many consider the benchmark in this mid-weight no-fairing category. Honda’s value proposition is that it’s a four-cylinder (smoother than rivals powered by a twin) and, of course, the E-Clutch, which no rivals in this size have.

If you want to get into E-Clutch as cheaply as possible, the CB750 Hornet E-Clutch is a parallel-twin that rings up at about $8,600 with destination.

Honda CB650R E-Clutch Ride Review

If I had to name the ultimate “car-dork cliché,” and I am absolutely guilty of this myself, it’s talking about “pure” driving experiences in terms of vehicular engagement over raw speed. It’s true, though—if we’re going for a fun drive, give me a 90-horsepower Caterham 7 over a Tesla Plaid any day of the week. That’s why the Miata is a perennial darling of auto writers, and why people who never off-road buy a Jeep—it just feels good to drive something that feels alive. It makes you feel, and here comes the line: “one with the machine.”

After about 60 seconds on the CB650R, I remembered: holy crap, motorcycling feels more badass than driving a McLaren (which is a comparison I can actually make, since I just reviewed one). Now, hang on. No biker on the planet would call this middleweight standard motorcycle “badass.” Its aesthetic and personality are more khakis and a blazer over a t-shirt; the maturity of crisp lines with an aura of youthful irreverence.

However, when it comes to feeling united with your machine, there is simply no comparison between a car and a motorcycle. Forget searching for steering feel in a coddling leather seat. On a bike, you’re out in the same freaking wind as your engine. A car is a vehicle; a motorcycle is more like a prosthesis.

I’m harping on this to underscore how important rider engagement is and why riders are right to be skeptical of experience-easing aids like E-Clutch. But also to emphasize that I really didn’t feel like I was missing any joy riding in clutchless mode. That was my biggest takeaway: This makes riding better, not just “easier.” I still felt completely engaged with the motorcycle as I clicked up and down the gears without needing my left hand—and to me, that’s the best endorsement anybody could give this concept.

I toggled between E-Clutch on and off a lot during the weeks I had this CB650R on test. While I was pleased to realize I could use the clutch lever more easily than I thought I might, I barely used it. The E-Clutch made me enjoy riding more, full stop.

As for the rest of the bike’s attributes—the CB650R is best described as “balanced.” It handles predictably and consistently, and feels reasonably responsive, but it’s certainly no sport bike. It’s fast enough to be entertaining, but the suspension isn’t punishingly stiff, and you’re in no danger of accidental wheelies.

The bike is very accessible to new riders, with an upright, comfortable riding posture, but also welcomes experienced riders who don’t necessarily feel an intense need for speed. The CB650R felt exciting and engaging to me without encouraging dangerous behavior, which I think is a great place for powersports equipment to live. It’s not annoyingly loud, either, which I also appreciated.

The only real disappointment for me is the gauge cluster. It’s serviceable and fine, and it does afford you some freedom (there are a few scene-changing display modes), but a big rectangular display is just kind of bleh. An analog tach would really go a long way toward making this thing look and feel cool.

Still, I enjoyed the heck out of riding it, and I’m now completely sold on Honda’s E-Clutch concept. It should be a great catalyst for getting more people to ride. And as engaging cars get harder and harder to find, more driving enthusiasts should really start looking at motorcycles as the next frontier of fun machinery.

Want to talk bikes? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post A Serious Injury Kept Me Off Motorcycles. Honda’s E-Clutch Got Me Back in the Saddle appeared first on The Drive.

There are only four major auto parts retailers left in America, and word has it that two of them may merge. O’Reilly is reportedly looking at spending $10 billion to get NAPA under its umbrella. That would be a particularly interesting auto industry moment, because even though both brands are similarly known for being brick-and-mortar car parts places, O’Reilly and NAPA fundamentally do business very differently.

Before we get into the distinction between NAPA and O’Reilly (I always think it’s “O’Reilly’s,” but no—no apostrophe-S), here’s the important context and news download.

O’Reilly is a big, publicly traded company. It runs all its stores with a high level of corporate consistency. NAPA Auto Parts has a corporate/franchise hybrid model, so many locations have a little bit more of a private-store vibe. A lot of NAPA stores (about 4,500 of the 6,000-odd locations) are owned and operated by small business people, not the corpo mothership, which in NAPA’s case is Genuine Parts Company (GPC). NAPA parent GPC also runs a company called Motion that sells industrial parts to factories.

Back in February, GPC indicated that it wanted to separate its auto and industrial operations more cleanly. I hadn’t seen much chatter about it until today, when I caught reports that O’Reilly Automotive made a bid for GPC’s car parts operations, which “could be worth $10 billion or more,” according to Bloomberg.

GPC didn’t exactly put NAPA up for sale—it announced plans to spin off NAPA into an independent entity in 2027. O’Reilly appears to be preempting the next evolution of its rival by trying to buy it.

Now, why does this matter beyond potentially changing parts-store signage? Well, let’s go a little deeper on how these brands differ from our consumer perspective.

• NAPA‘s hybrid franchise setup leans heavily on the commercial mechanic market, so enthusiasts often favor NAPA for having more experienced parts-counter workers (the old-school guys who actually know what a carburetor is) and higher-tier, OEM-quality house brands (like Carlyle tools or Echlin ignition components).
• O’Reilly is a corporate-owned powerhouse that has grown rapidly by absorbing regional chains over the decades (like CSK Auto/Checker/Schuck’s/Kragen in 2008). While it has great inventory tracking, O’Reilly stores tend to have a more standardized corporate retail experience.

As a frequent auto parts store customer, I’ve had pretty good experiences with both NAPA and O’Reilly. The green guys were my go-to when I lived in Los Angeles. I was on a first-name basis with the counter clerks at multiple locations, and they were always super helpful and knowledgeable. But you find some top-gun old timers behind the counters at NAPAs, too. I remember going into a NAPA near Lake Tahoe one winter and ending up discussing the merits and chemical makeup of different antifreeze brands with a NAPA employee for ages.

All that to say, if O’Reilly did buy NAPA, it would be interesting to see if it stuck with the franchise model (or even the branding) or squashed it. If indie-owned NAPAs go away, car culture could lose not just the warmth of NAPA’s local speed-shop feel, but also an avenue for enthusiast-owned parts shops to exist. Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter, since anybody can theoretically market car parts from anywhere online.

Speaking of being anywhere, GPC’s automotive division spans more than 10,000 locations globally. O’Reilly has spent the last couple of years quietly exploring expansion into Canada and Mexico—the green brand’s $10 billion bid could also be in service of establishing an international auto parts empire.

Reports indicate that a NAPA acquisition deal could be done by “late summer,” but it’s tough to tell how realistic it is exactly. Antitrust and anti-monopoly laws should prevent O’Reilly from wholesale gobbling up NAPA—in fact, I found some stats on that. There are about 1,800 O’Reilly stores that are within one mile of a NAPA store. Of those overlapping areas, about 600 markets have no AutoZone or Advance Auto Parts nearby. So in those 600 neighborhoods, an O’Reilly buyout creates an immediate monopoly, making those specific stores guaranteed targets for forced FTC divestitures or closures.

The stock market’s response as of this writing is that GPC’s stock is up (people are pleased the brand was deemed validated at 10 billion bucks), and O’Reilly’s is down just a little bit (a cash acquisition would mean debt, and then there are those antitrust issues to navigate).

There are a lot of question marks around this situation that I’m going to try to keep an eye on. Maybe O’Reilly ends up inheriting NAPA parts brands and Carlyle tools, or perhaps NAPAs get shuttered and end up becoming Advance Auto Parts or AutoZone locations to satisfy regulators.

As it stands, O’Reilly has had Wall Street’s attention, carrying a market valuation of roughly $77 billion. It has the cash reserves and the credit leverage to make historic deals. Meanwhile, GPC (NAPA) has been struggling. Hit hard by high supply chain costs and economic volatility, its stock was lagging, leaving the entire GPC conglomerate valued at just around $16 billion.

I tend to think fewer competitors is worse for consumers in the long term, though I’m also expecting a flurry of comments along the lines of “I buy everything online anyway.” My neighborhood NAPA doesn’t always have the parts I need on shelves, but they can usually get them for me within 24 hours. And I’d always rather support a locally owned business than a multinational monolith if I can.

Have any auto parts industry insight? Drop me a line at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.

The post The $10 Billion Takeover That Could Turn the Auto Parts Business Upside Down, Explained appeared first on The Drive.

My first experience with TuxMat came a long time before any official product test. I once got picked up from a Miami hotel by a TuxMat-equipped Mercedes EQS, and I remember thinking how nice a job these mats did of balancing a robust-but-classy aesthetic that fit the car really well. And, of course, the really neat feature about these is how completely they cover the bottom half of the car interior. 

Since then, we’ve put them in sedans, crossovers, and trucks, and I’ve been pleased to see how well TuxMat car mats are fitted to not just specific models, but specific trim levels. Plenty of custom mat companies offer model-specific options, but TuxMat really gets down to a level of granularity that other aftermarket companies don’t really touch. That’s the domain of Sam Cheng, TuxMat’s Director of Product Development, and his team.

I love industrial design in general, and have been getting into 3D digital design in particular since I started 3D printing (the two concepts kind of go hand-in-hand, of course). It was pretty fun to nerd out with Sam a little bit about how TuxMat makes the designs for its vehicle-specific mats.

TuxMat’s commitment to a superior-fitment, trim-specific design philosophy means that product development is a lot more arduous than it would be for even just a make/model-specific mat set.

As he was telling me about the company’s workflow and design process, Sam explained that late-model cars tend to have more physical variation across trim levels than they did in the past, giving examples of moving consoles, bench seats versus captains’ chairs, and optional ice boxes. “That customer … bought the car with the ice box and the subwoofer, and the mat is not trying to bend over it—it actually goes around those curves.”

Naturally, getting all those measurements is a little more involved than tape-measuring lengths and widths. TuxMat goes through a complex 3D-scanning and data clean-up process to create models of car interiors. The development process utilizes advanced scanning equipment that employs “structured light,” combining laser lines, blue LEDs, and infrared light to effectively scan various textures and light-absorbing surfaces.

Sam explained that the scanning process typically takes about two and a half hours, depending on the size of the vehicle, after which the team cleans up its resulting polygon data. Blind spots in tight areas are addressed by taking multiple scans from different angles and stitching them together to create a high-fidelity model.

“We have a team of designers who are extremely experienced, know about our coverage needs, and they sort of go and design the mat to the best of our ability without compromising safety. We’ll design in safety features that make sure we clear the pedal and adhere to the OEM retention,” Sam said. “So we actually have a lot of unique parts. You know, Mercedes has a different way of holding down the mats to Subaru, to Kia, to others. So, we’ll scan all those, document, and get the exact matching hardware that clips in nicely to the OEM style. We’ll do that for every single area. And then work with our factory to create molds that create these mats. And that’s just one of the steps—then mats are test-fitted and refined.”

TuxMat is currently shipping its second generation of mats, informed by the company’s ever-increasing breadth of knowledge and experience. “… sometimes we’ll go look at customers who’ve had cars for a while, and we actually look for scuff marks. Dirt marks and such are potential opportunities for us, really, right? It’s like, you might not think you’re going to step there, but you actually will brush your boot against it.” Observations like that are what got TuxMat started down the path of comprehensive-coverage fitment in the first place.

“Each car is a completely different design challenge,” Sam told me. With the Tesla Model X, for example, “I just remember those seat rails—the way those seats move forward and backward, and the way we had to tackle that, was way different than how we tackled, recently, Lucid Gravity, which had a weird folding geometry that we had to do some simulations on.”

At the same time, now that TuxMat has a decade of operations under its belt, it has a deep library of internal knowledge that can still help inform adjacent product development. Sam used the example of the new Toyota RAV4 and 4Runner, some of which have “a kind of weird step” to accommodate hybrid batteries below the floor. “And so we just went in and pulled up the data and looked at it,” adapting a solution from another project to help with another.

While fitment is critical, so too is material selection. TuxMat car mats have a unique multi-level makeup called TriForce, which gives it a plush feel without losing TuxMat’s signature crisp edges. Sam walked me through how it works.

“Ours is a tri-layer construction. We have a vinyl layer on the top, a mid-layer which is the EVA foam layer, and then there are grip dots on the bottom.” That TriForce construction is how TuxMat is able to make a product that is both plush where you want it to be and stiff where you need it to be.

“And that’s what kind of separates us,” Sam elaborated. With cheaper mats, you “step in and it’s a hard plastic—especially in the winter, it just feels like ‘clack clack clack.’ Whereas we step in, and it’s really soft and plush. I remember when I put in TuxMat in my car—I drive a van, so the whole back got the new material. My two daughters were so excited. They actually took off their boots and were like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to get the mat dirty. It’s so soft.’ … But our top material is quite easy to clean … Even after a whole season of salt and mud and so forth, it’s pretty easy to spray down and doesn’t stain.”

Besides fitment and maintenance, there’s one more piece of the puzzle: Durability. TuxMat car mats need to be able to take boots, sandals, paws, claws, and whatever else is going to grind on them for hours and days. “We did, in-house, build what we call a ‘fatigue tester’ … we have this crazy machine that you can strap on a boot with weights that can simulate people walking, grinding [the mats] with different substrates for thousands of cycles, doing cycle testing.”

At the top of this story, I described TuxMat’s aesthetic as “robust-but-classy.” What I meant by that is its products have hard, but clean, structural lines and decorative elements. The material has some give, but it has a James Bond wetsuit vibe, rather than the Austin Powers pleather-adjacent one some aftermarket mats have.

The mats you’re seeing here are in a five-seat Tesla Model X. I think you’ll agree that this is a great example of OEM-fitted clips, the side-wall tucking, and the zero-gap finish.

That combo of high-end execution, perfect fitment, and comprehensive zero-gap floor coverage makes TuxMat a supremely nice floor mat. To apply that to your own car, check out TuxMat’s full fitment catalog—and make sure you click down to your specific trim level!

The post Advanced Aftermarket Engineering: Here’s How Seriously TuxMat Takes Perfect Fitment appeared first on The Drive.

Instagram is constantly feeding me incredibly silly and bizarre Amazon products, but they might have gotten me with this one: A 300-watt Bluetooth outdoor party speaker shaped (and sized) like a jerry can. Incredible. It’s 44% off this week during Prime Day, making it cheap enough to buy for fun.

44% off: ULTIMEA Go Portable Party Speaker ($149.99)

See It

I can’t promise what kind of sound quality to expect (probably not much), but you will definitely amuse your friends trackside, trailside, or wherever you drag it when you bust it out. I mean, please don’t be one of those people trampling through a quiet forest blasting TikTok remixes. But this is a pretty sweet tailgate party accessory and most Amazon reviews are surprisingly decent.

I had actually thought about making something like this with an old can I have already, but just buying this would be a whole lot easier.

If you’re looking for some more Prime Day bargains, check out our deals page, favorite automotive items, and great car-cleaning stuff under $20. Just remember that prices can change due to the nature of Prime Day, so click early and click often.

The post Hilarious Gas Can-Shaped Party Speaker Is Cheap Enough to Impulse-Buy During Amazon Prime Day appeared first on The Drive.

Bosch is discounting a big list of nice tools for Amazon Prime Day. Offering well beyond just what you can use in the garage, you can get a great discount on all kinds of things from Starlock oscillating blades, jigsaw blades, router bits, cordless sanders, grinders, saws, work lights, batteries, and specialty tools. Whether you’re restocking your workshop, adding to an existing Bosch cordless system, or picking up accessory kits, you’ll find a deal here for you.

Our friends over at the home-repair site Bob Vila organized all the best Bosch buys going right now, which we’ll run through below. I personally really like the look of this compact reciprocating saw—looks like it’d fit really well in tight spots, and it’s $50 off. This wet/dry vac also looks enticing at 30% off.

And this coffee maker might seem a little out of left field on a car site, but if you run a shop, it’d be awesome in the waiting room. This Bosch automatic espresso machine is normally $2,200, but can be had for just $1,500 until June 26.

Great Prime Day Bosch Tool Deals 

Bosch 12V Max FlexiClick Drill/Driver Kit

Now $129.99 (was $239)

Buy at Amazon

Bosch’s FlexiClick compact drill/driver kit is built for tight spaces, awkward angles, and cabinet or furniture work where a standard drill can get in the way. The 5-in-1 setup makes this one of the most versatile cordless tool deals in the roundup.

Bosch 30-Piece Carbide-Tipped Router Bit Set

Now $94.99 (was $334.99)

Buy at Amazon

This 30-piece Bosch router bit set is a top choice for woodworkers, trim work, edge profiles, and cabinet projects. The set gives DIYers and pros a comprehensive selection that saves big bucks over buying router bits one at a time.

See all Bosch Prime Day deals and get up to 61% off new tools and accessories!

More Prime Day Bosch Tool Deals at Amazon 

Amazon is also discounting Bosch drill bits, driver bit sets, oscillating blades, cordless tools, router gear, SDS accessories, and workshop tools for Prime Day. 

Bosch Impact Driver Bit Sets and Screwdriving Kits

• Bosch 44-Piece Impact Tough Screwdriving Set for $21.21 (was $48.98)
• Bosch 45-Piece Driven Impact Screwdriving Set for $29.61 (was $49.94)
• Bosch 40-Piece Impact Tough Drill/Drive Set for $24.99 (was $56.86)
• Bosch 48-Piece Impact Tough Screwdriving Set for $34.99 (was $56.75)
• Bosch 24-Piece Impact Tough Screwdriving Set for $14.95 (was $32.90)
• Bosch 41-Piece Drilling and Driving Mixed Set for $22.99 (was $50.49)

Bosch Driver Bits and Small Fastening Accessories

• Bosch 10-Pack 6-Inch Phillips #2 Impact Bits for $11.99 (was $25.12)
• Bosch 10-Pack 3-1/2-Inch Square #2 Impact Bits for $11.49 (was $17.24)
• Bosch 8-Piece Impact Tough Phillips Power Bits for $10.55 (was $13.62)
• Bosch 8-Piece Impact Tough Torx Power Bits for $10.49 (was $13.62)
• Bosch 3-Inch Impact Tough Magnetic Bit Holder for $7.49 (was $9.89)
• Bosch 15-Pack 1-Inch Phillips #2 Insert Bits for $8.39 (was $12.77)
• Bosch 15-Pack 2-Inch Square #2 Power Bits for $9.99 (was $18.95)
• Bosch Drywall Dimpler Screw Setter for $11.99 (was $26.72)
• Bosch 15-Piece 2-Inch Phillips Bit Set for $5.98 (was $8.98)

Bosch Drill Bit Sets

• Bosch 5-Piece Impact Tough Titanium Drill Bit Set for $11.29 (was $19.89)
• Bosch 9-Piece Impact Tough Titanium Drill Bit Set for $19.99 (was $31.89)
• Bosch 29-Piece Gold Oxide Drill Bit Set for $29.99 (was $68.39)
• Bosch 21-Piece Black Oxide Drill Bit Set for $18.49 (was $61.79)
• Bosch 14-Piece Black Oxide Drill Bit Set for $12.99 (was $49.19)
• Bosch 21-Piece Cobalt Metal Drill Bit Set for $46.99 (was $119.59)
• Bosch 14-Piece Cobalt Metal Drill Bit Set for $30.99 (was $91.39)
• Bosch 14-Piece Cobalt M42 Drill Bit Set for $29.99 (was $101.69)
• Bosch 21-Piece Cobalt M42 Drill Bit Set for $49.99 (was $148.39)

Bosch Wood, Masonry, Tile, and Specialty Drill Bits

• Bosch 1/4-Inch Carbide-Tipped Glass and Tile Bit for $4.74 (was $9.59)
• Bosch 14-Piece Fast Spiral Rotary Masonry Bit Set for $11.99 (was $27.89)
• Bosch 4-Piece Natural Stone Tile Set for $19.58 (was $34.09)
• Bosch 10-Piece Daredevil Spade Bit Set for $20.67 (was $40.29)
• Bosch 13-Piece Daredevil Spade Bit Set for $23.99 (was $65.99)
• Bosch 12-Piece Daredevil Spade Bit Set for $17.97 (was $49.69)
• Bosch 5-Piece SDS-Plus Bulldog Rotary Hammer Bits for $15.99 (was $34.73)
• Bosch 5-Piece SDS-Plus Bulldog Rotary Hammer Bit Set for $18.34 (was $41.69)
• Bosch 5-Piece Hex Shank Countersink Drill Bit Set for $15.99 (was $29.39)
• Bosch 3-Piece Diamond Drill Bit Set for $42.71 (was $76.79)
• Bosch 11-Piece Diamond Hole Saw Set for $169.99 (was $552.83)

Bosch Oscillating Tool, Jigsaw, and Sanding Accessories

• Bosch 3-Piece Starlock Oscillating Blade Set for $28.94 (was $64.42)
• Bosch 3-Pack Starlock Bi-Metal Oscillating Blades for $22.99 (was $58.56)
• Bosch 3-Pack Starlock Carbide Plunge Cut Blades for $32.99 (was $70.60)
• Bosch 5-Piece Starlock Carbide Blade Set for $30.99 (was $56.43)
• Bosch 10-Pack Starlock Carbide Oscillating Blades for $89.99 (was $146.75)
• Bosch 10-Pack Starlock Bi-Metal Oscillating Blades for $65.97 (was $124.17)
• Bosch 10-Pack Starlock Carbide Plunge Cut Blades for $89.99 (was $135.46)
• Bosch 5-Piece Starlock Oscillating Blade Set for $39.99 (was $106.60)
• Bosch 12-Piece U-Shank Jigsaw Blade Set for $12.26 (was $20.76)
• Bosch 30-Piece T-Shank Jigsaw Blade Set for $28.87 (was $81.14)
• Bosch 6-Inch Medium Hook-and-Loop Sanding Pad for $29.99 (was $87.96)
• Bosch Woodrazor Planer Blades 2-Pack for $10.99 (was $30.09)

Bosch SDS, Rotary Hammer, and Demolition Accessories

• Bosch SDS-Max Rotary Hammer Core Bit for $105.25 (was $334.08)
• Bosch 2-Piece SDS-Max Self-Sharpening Chisel Set for $22.93 (was $49.30)
• Bosch SDS-Plus Bulldog Floor Scraper for $37.11 (was $43.68)
• Bosch SDS-Max Tile Chisel for $21.23 (was $24.99)
• Bosch SDS-Plus Bulldog Xtreme Tile Chisel for $15.99 (was $24.27)
• Bosch 5-Inch SDS-Max Rotary Hammer Core Bit for $180.70 (was $519.39)
• Bosch 3-9/16-Inch SDS-Max Core Cutter for $139.99 (was $405.43)
• Bosch 5-Inch SDS-Max Rotary Hammer Core Bit (Long) for $169.78 (was $541.01)
• Bosch 4-Inch SDS-Max Rotary Hammer Core Bit for $148.74 (was $431.31)
• Bosch 2-1/2-Inch Wild Bore SDS-Max Rotary Hammer Bit for $181.99 (was $538.13)
• Bosch 3-Jaw Keyless Chuck with SDS-Plus Shank for $21.99 (was $87.11)

Bosch Router Tools and Woodworking Accessories

• Bosch Router Subbase Centering Pin and Cone for $10.25 (was $13.30)
• Bosch 8-Piece Router Template Guide Set for $19.99 (was $25.88)
• Bosch 15-Piece Carbide-Tipped Router Bit Set for $76.19 (was $90.33)
• Bosch 30-Piece Carbide-Tipped Router Bit Set for $94.99 (was $149.99)

Bosch 12V and 18V Cordless Tools

• Bosch 12V Max Brushless Hex Screwdriver for $99 (was $149)
• Bosch 18V Brushless Cut-Out Tool for $95.44 (was $159)
• Bosch 18V Multidirectional LED Worklight for $79 (was $109)
• Bosch 12V Max LED Worklight for $24.50 (was $35)
• Bosch 18V Brushless Barrel-Grip Jigsaw for $169 (was $229)
• Bosch 18V Brushless Sheet Orbital Sander for $112.99 (was $189)
• Bosch 18V X-LOCK Brushless Angle Grinder for $92.14 (was $159)
• Bosch 18V PROFACTOR 7-1/4-Inch Circular Saw Kit for $313.99 (was $449)
• Bosch 18V 6-Bay Fast Battery Charger for $99 (was $129)
• Bosch 12V Max Brushless Hammer Drill/Driver for $110.39 (was $159)
• Bosch 18V Brushless Screwgun for $84.99 (was $179)
• Bosch 18V Cordless Jobsite Radio for $159 (was $179)

More Bosch Cordless Tools, Kits, Batteries, and Measuring Gear

• Bosch 18V Brushless Random Orbit Sander for $109.99 (was $159)
• Bosch 18V PROFACTOR Hammer Drill/Driver for $122.53 (was $249)
• Bosch 12V Max Starlock Oscillating Multi-Tool for $79 (was $119)
• Bosch 18V CORE18V 6Ah Battery for $99 (was $169)
• Bosch 12V Max Brushless Orbital Finishing Sander for $103.99 (was $159)
• Bosch 18V Hammer Drill/Driver Kit, Reconditioned, for $129 (was $189)
• Bosch 12V Max 2-Tool Combo Kit for $145.62 (was $219)
• Bosch 12V Max Random Orbit Sander for $79.99 (was $139)
• Bosch 9-Inch Drywall Sander Kit for $409 (was $549)
• Bosch 18V Compact Reciprocating Saw for $98.99 (was $149)
• Bosch 18V StarlockPlus Oscillating Multi-Tool for $104.49 (was $179)
• Bosch 18V Cordless Wet/Dry Vacuum for $117.99 (was $169)
• Bosch 12V Max Right Angle Die Grinder for $94.49 (was $189)
• Bosch 18V High Torque Right Angle Drill for $198.82 (was $299)
• Bosch 18V Compact Drill/Driver + Impact Driver Kit for $178 (was $219)
• Bosch 12V Max 5-In-1 FlexiClick Drill/Driver Kit for $129.99 (was $239)
• Bosch 400-Ft Blaze Outdoor Connected Laser Measure for $208.99 (was $329)
• Bosch Auto Feed Attachment for GTB18V-45 Screwgun for $79 (was $119)

The post The Very Best Bosch Tool Deals on Amazon Prime Day 2026 appeared first on The Drive.

Amazon Prime Day is a perfect low-stakes opportunity to test out a new car cleaning product or simply restock your garage. Here are my favorite cleaning, detailing, and car-care accessories that you can score a really good price on if you’re a Prime member (free trials here) through June 26.

22% off: Mothers California Gold Ceramic Spray & Rinse Wax ($13.99). This is an awesome and very easy step to add to even a casual car cleaning—just spritz your car with it after washing, while it’s still wet, then rinse and let the chemical go to work protecting your paint. No, it’s not going to last as long as a $1,000 full ceramic job from a pro detailer, but it offers great protection for minimal time and money investment.

42% off: Mothers five-inch microfiber polishing pads ($7.59). My polishing pads are always getting wrecked, used, or stolen by my dog (or all of those things). Grabbing a six-pack when they’re almost half-priced is a no-brainer.

40% off: Chemical Guys Grubbie Edge pet hair removal tool ($8.99). This little thing does a great job of raking up dog fluff that gets trapped in car upholstery. If you have a dog that rides in your car, this is an excellent item to have, and this price is killer. You can also buy a brush-style one, which is also 40% off.

25% off: Lexol Two-Step Leather Kit ($17.31). People tend to be big-time brand loyal when it comes to leather cleaners. I’m not, but I have had great luck with Lexol, so I’m pleased to see it on sale this week. I use it not just for car seats, but also for some of my nice shoes and even an English horse saddle.

15% off: Jay Leno’s Garage All Purpose Cleaner Car Detail Spray ($8.47). I know, this one might seem random. First of all, yes, Jay Leno has his own car cleaning product brand. But this particular product in his lineup is, like, insanely effective. I don’t know what’s in it, and I don’t know how it works so damn well, but I swear I have removed stains from paint and fabrics with this stuff that other chems could not bite into. A little goes a long way, too.

I’ll update this post as more items pop up on my radar. And remember, due to the nature of Amazon Prime Day, prices might change by the time you click. But I stand by these recommendations regardless.

The post Prime Day Car Detailing Deals: Products Under $20 That Are Really Worth Buying appeared first on The Drive.

Amazon Prime Day deals are live all week. We’ve shared some good discount roundups around popular accessories, but that made me realize I should make a master list of the very best Prime Day scores specifically for people who are into cars and adjacent hobbies. So here we go—I’ll update this as new things catch my eye and take it off “live” status at the end of the week.

Prices are accurate as of publication, but due to the nature of Amazon Prime, they may change by the time you click.

37% off: Logitech G920 Driving Force gaming wheel and pedals ($189.99). Used or on sale is a great way to grab one of these as a casual gamer. They really do make driving games more fun, even arcadey ones.

In fact, Logitech’s whole catalog of car-sim stuff is on sale this week. Scroll through the brand’s store and build yourself a mini sim rig for less!

Up to 64% off: Citizen watches. Citizen is a solid-but-inexpensive (mostly) watch brand. I’m on my second Weekender Garrison field watch (first one was smashed in a motorcycle accident). And you know what? If I smash this one, I don’t really have to worry, because they’re only $179. Seriously though, if you’re into cars, you might be into watches, and there are some great deals in the Citizen store this week.

31% off: Bissell Little Green portable carpet and upholstery cleaner ($110). If you’ve never cleaned your car’s carpeting with a proper carpet cleaning tool, your mind will be blown when you see how much filth comes out of it with one of these things. Absolutely worth owning one if you like keeping a clean car, even more so if you have kids or pets.

25% off: Gerber EAB Lite Pocket Razor ($11.99). I feel a little silly shilling a $12 box cutter, but I love this thing so much. It’s so light and dainty yet tough-feeling—I keep one of these next to my front door and use it to open the mail and packages. It also ends up being my EDC blade. Is it tactical? Hell no. Is it good for camping? Not really. But the vast majority of the slicing I do is cutting open Amazon boxes, and at that task, it is perfect. Gerber is discounting a bunch of other stuff right now, too, if you want something a little more Croc Dundee-worthy.

44% off: Marshall Emberton III Bluetooth speaker ($99.99). I’ve been thinking about putting one of these in my International Scout to replace the in-dash radio. Looks ’70s period correct—that’s the main value proposition, here. Don’t expect exceptional sound quality. Only the silver-on-black one is this cheap, though.

30% off: 2′ by 3′ Blackline drying towel ($34.99). Reviews for this expensive towel are universally good—we actually just got one into our testing barn and will wring it out (ha) in the near future ourselves. Blackline has a big catalog of car care products on sale right now that might also be worth checking out.

35% off: Chemical Guys dual-action random orbital polisher ($101.19). This is a pretty low price for a polisher. Chemical Guys also has a lot of other car cleaners on sale for you to check out.

34% off: Mothers Mag and Aluminum Polish ($10.54). This is a specialized cleaner that just rocks. I love using this on exhaust tips. Be careful with it, but it’s amazing at bringing new life to ugly, once-shiny metal. Check out the rest of Mothers’ sale catalog while you’re here.

20% off: OLIGHT ArkPro EDC Flat Flashlight ($79.99). I keep seeing ads for this light, and I really like the design. The flat, folded-knife shaped body looks like it’s really be optimal for messing around under a car or under a hood.

We’ll be updating this post as new things catch our eye.

The post Amazon Prime Day Deals: All the Best Buys for Car People appeared first on The Drive.

DeWalt tools live at a good intersection of quality and affordability. So when the yellow tool brand runs sales, you stand to snag a great deal even if you don’t already have batteries within its ecosystem. Here are the best buys that caught our eye this Prime Day.

I run a bunch of the brand’s power tools and drill bits in my shop, and DeWalt tools have built quite a bit around my property. I’ve never had an issue with one. The only DeWalt tool I’ve been able to kill so far was a string trimmer (weed whacker), when I accidentally got it caught in some rope. Even then—I took it to a service center and company warrantied it.

Since this is an automotive site, I’ll run down the best DeWalt deals car-people are likely to be interested in here. But we’ll include a rundown on other good deals too.

48% off: DeWalt Buffer, Polisher ($129, normally $249)

See It

• 46% off: DeWalt 192 piece Mechanic’s Tool Set, 1/2, 1/4, 3/8 Socket Set, SAE and Metric (on sale for $156.74)
• 22% off: DeWalt Bucket Tool Organizer (these are surprisingly useful!) ($17.98)
• 15% off: DeWalt Angle Grinder, 4-1/2-Inch to 5-Inch, Trigger Switch ($126.60)
• 30% off: DeWalt Drill Bit Set ($22.98)
• 28% off: DeWalt Rechargable Flashlight ($39.00)
• 20% off: DeWalt 20V MAX XR Reciprocating Saw (sawzall) ($159.00)
• Then you’ll need a:
• 22% off: 12-piece DeWalt reciprocating saw blade kit ($22.00)
• 20% off: DeWalt 8-Gallon Shop Vacuum ($103.99)

Please note: These prices were accurate at the time of publication, but the nature of Prime Day is that some deals disappear quickly. Click early, click often!

More Prime Day DeWalt Deals at Amazon 

Our sister site Bob Vila gathered a big list of other DeWalt items Amazon is discounting. Here are some more cordless tools, mechanics sets, batteries, work lights, blades, drill bits, storage, and shop gear on sale for Prime Day. 

DeWalt Batteries and 20V Platform Basics

• DeWalt 20V MAX Battery 4-Pack for $270.74 (was $379)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 5.0Ah Battery 2-Pack for $149 (was $239)
• DeWalt Jobsite Pro X2 Wireless Earbuds for $99.98 (was $116.93)

DeWalt Drill, Driver, and Combo Kit Deals

• DeWalt 20V MAX Brushless Drill & Impact Driver Combo for $169 (was $249)
• DeWalt 20V MAX Brushless 1/2-Inch Drill/Driver Kit for $99 (was $179)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 1/4-Inch Impact Driver Kit for $97.56 (was $179)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 3-Speed Impact Driver Kit for $165 (was $219)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR 3-Speed Brushless Impact Driver for $124.10 (was $169)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 3-Tool Brushless Combo Kit for $329 (was $399)
• DeWalt 20V MAX Orbital Sander + Oscillating Tool Combo for $269 (was $349)

DeWalt Saws, Miter Saws, and Cutting Tools

• DeWalt 20V MAX Cordless Reciprocating Saw for $129 (was $159)
• DeWalt 12-Inch 15-Amp Single Bevel Miter Saw for $299 (was $359)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 7-1/4-Inch Cordless Miter Saw with Battery for $426.80 (was $519)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 7-1/4-Inch Cordless Circular Saw with Brake for $249.99 (was $279)
• DeWalt Rolling Table Saw Stand for $208.92 (was $239)

DeWalt Sanders, Grinders, and Finish Tools

• DeWalt 20V MAX Brushless Orbital Sander for $96.42 (was $179)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 4-1/2-Inch Brushless Angle Grinder for $154.99 (was $249)
• DeWalt 4-1/2-Inch 11-Amp Angle Grinder for $94 (was $130)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR 1/4-Sheet Cordless Sander for $138.97 (was $179)
• DeWalt 1/4-Sheet Electric Palm Sander for $66.31 (was $74)
• DeWalt 20V MAX Brushless Cordless Planer for $189.98 (was $249)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR Cordless Bandfile Belt Sander for $237.15 (was $287.43)

DeWalt Mechanics Sets, Ratchets, and Sockets

• DeWalt 192-Piece Mechanics Tool Set for $205.64 (was $289.99)
• DeWalt 142-Piece Mechanics Tool Set for $118.40 (was $175.99)
• DeWalt 84-Piece Mechanics Tool Set for $59.97 (was $78.99)
• DeWalt 1/2-Inch Impact Ready Deep Socket for $4.99 (was $8.22)
• DeWalt 9/16-Inch Impact Ready Deep Socket for $6.69 (was $9.97)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR Sealed Head Ratchet for $219.86 (was $279)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR 3/4-Inch Impact Wrench for $299.95 (was $399)

DeWalt Drill Bits, Driver Bits, Blades, and Wheels

• DeWalt 14-Piece Drill Bit Set for $14.79 (was $18.98)
• DeWalt 14-Piece Titanium Nitride Drill Bit Set for $19.99 (was $22.98)
• DeWalt 21-Piece Black & Gold Oxide Drill Bit Set for $26.99 (was $39.57)
• DeWalt 12-Inch 14 TPI Reciprocating Saw Blades, 5-Pack, for $18.99 (was $30.22)
• DeWalt 10-Inch 24-Tooth Table Saw Blade for $20.71 (was $35.48)
• DeWalt 4-1/2-Inch Metal Grinding Wheel for $2.99 (was $5.48)
• DeWalt Pilot Point Gold Twist Drill Bit for $5.99 (was $8.25)

DeWalt Work Lights, Charging, and Jobsite Electronics

• DeWalt 20V MAX 2,000-Lumen Compact LED Work Light for $108.73 (was $129)
• DeWalt 20V MAX LED Work Light/Flashlight for $33 (was $84)
• DeWalt 20V MAX LED Work Light with Pivoting Head for $45.29 (was $89)
• DeWalt 20V MAX Dual Port Jobsite Charging Station for $114.53 (was $122.67)
• DeWalt Magnetic Wireless Charging Stand for $114.98 (was $139.99)
• DeWalt 20V MAX Cordless Jobsite Bluetooth Speaker for $125.64 (was $139)
• DeWalt ToughSound Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Jobsite Speaker for $129.99 (was $149.99)

More DeWalt Bits and Fastening Accessories

• DeWalt 20-Piece Black Oxide Drill Bit Set for $19.99 (was $23.98)
• DeWalt Impact Ready Flextorq 40-Piece Screwdriver Bit Set for $22.98 (was $29.98)

DeWalt Tool Bags, Storage, and Shop Setup

• DeWalt TSTAK Small Parts & Screw Organizer for $27.98 (was $32.87)
• DeWalt 20-Inch Water-Resistant Hard Bottom Tool Bag for $75 (was $89.98)
• DeWalt ToughSystem Tool Tote for $49.99 (was $69.99)
• DeWalt TSTAK 16-Inch Tool Bag for $48.98 (was $67.95)
• DeWalt 8-Compartment Medium Portable Parts Organizer for $7.99 (was $8.98)
• DeWalt 18×48-Inch Silicone Workbench Mat for $62.04 (was $72.99)

DeWalt Hand Tools, Layout, and Small Shop Items

• DeWalt Atomic 25-Ft Compact Tape Measure for $20.89 (was $21.99)
• DeWalt 25mm Snap-Off Utility Knife for $11.99 (was $15.15)
• DeWalt 6-Inch Stainless Steel Putty Knife for $15.29 (was $16.99)
• DeWalt 100-Ft Closed Case Tape Measure for $26.97 (was $32.93)
• DeWalt Self-Leveling Cross-Line Laser Level for $169.97 (was $219)
• DeWalt 5-Piece Handheld Air Gun Kit for $10.99 (was $12.83)

DeWalt Rotary Hammers and Specialty Cordless Tools

• DeWalt 20V MAX Cordless Grease Gun Kit for $229 (was $299)
• DeWalt 20V MAX 1-1/8-Inch SDS Plus Rotary Hammer Kit for $478.17 (was $538.37)
• DeWalt 20V MAX SDS Plus Brushless Rotary Hammer for $290.44 (was $349)
• DeWalt 20V MAX XR Cordless Rivet Tool Kit for $813.99 (was $1,059)

The post 48% off a Polisher and More DeWalt Prime Day Deals for Car People appeared first on The Drive.

There are a zillion car battery jump starters on the market, but NOCO has remained one of our favorites because the brand hits a great sweet spot between high-performance and high-value. You get a lot of functionality and solid build quality for the money. And with Amazon Prime Day going right now, you can score a good discount on some of NOCO’s best-selling roadside rescue tools.

GB40 and GBX155 Portable Jump Starters

Our readers buy a lot of GB40 and GBX155 jump starters. These are great everyday-carry jumper packs to leave in your car and have handy to rescue yourself (or someone else you might come across) who gets stuck with a dead battery. They’re compact and quick-charging, but powerful enough to jump a car, truck, or boat.

20% off: NOCO GB40 ($79.96 for Amazon Prime Day)

20% off: NOCO GBX155 ($295.96 for Amazon Prime Day)

See all NOCO jump starter Prime Day deals for more options.

GENIUS1 Smart Battery Charger

This is a great solution for long-term vehicle storage, whether it’s a boat or ATV you leave at camp, or a sports car you’re going to tuck away for winter. This is set-it-and-forget-it maintenance charging for all vehicles

20% off: NOCO Genius1 ($23.96 for Amazon Prime Day)

See all NOCO battery maintainer Prime Day deals for more options.

AL5 Portable Air Compressor

This lightweight tire inflation tool is built for road trips and trails. Inflates tires quickly, and the self-contained battery means you never need to stretch a power cord. Best of all, having one of these means you never have to hunt for a gas station with a working tire compressor!

37% off: NOCO AL5 ($43.94 for Amazon Prime Day)

See all NOCO air compressor Prime Day deals for more options.

More NOCO Deals

Check out NOCO’s dedicated Amazon Prime Day deal page to see more models on sale. Some stuff in the catalog is half-off as of this writing. Almost every NOCO battery charger and maintainer is at least 20% off this week. If you’ve been thinking about getting one, now’s the time to pounce!

The post NOCO’s Best-Deal Jump Starters and Inflators Are on Sale for Prime Day appeared first on The Drive.

The Leatherman Charge Plus TTI 19-in-1 multitool is a whopping 40% off for Amazon Prime Day this week. That inspired me to poke around for more scores on everyday-carry accessories. Here are the best bargains I found.

Don’t sleep on that little Gerber utility blade, either. I have one, and it’s one of my all-time favorite EDC knives. Tiny, super-light, and universal blade replacements are readily available at any hardware store or gas station across America.

40% off: Leatherman Charge Plus ($119.95)

See It

35% off: Leatherman Free K4 ($64.95)

See It

25% off: Gerber Gear EAB Lite Pocket Razor Knife ($11.99)

See It

21% off: Victorinox Swiss Champ Swiss Army Knife ($91.04)

See It

35% off: SOG Altair XR Superlight ($64.92)

See It

More deals from your favorite EDC brands:

• Shop more Leatherman Prime Day deals
• Shop more Gerber Prime Day deals
• Shop more Victorinox (Swiss Army) Prime Day deals
• Shop more SOG Prime Day deals

The post 40% off Leatherman and More Great EDC Deals at Amazon Prime Day Live Now appeared first on The Drive.

Amazon is consistently a great source for four particular types of car-related items: Tire inflators, battery chargers, OBD scanners, and cleaning products. With Amazon Prime Day live from today to June 26, now is your time to pounce. Here are our picks for automotive onboard diagnostic/OBD2 scanners you can get a great deal on right now.

For serious work and comprehensive scanning, the Topdon One (21% off for Prime Day) is extremely powerful and capable. Access dealer-level diagnostic tools with a huge color interface. List price is $889, grab one for $699 this week.

21% Off: Topdon One Bidirectional Scan Tool ($699)

See It

My favorite iPhone and Android-pairable OBD2 scanner, the BlueDriver Pro Next Gen (42% off for Prime Day), is also on sale and an absolutely screaming deal at $74.94. I have the previous iteration of this, and it’s great. It’s super small and robust, easily pairs with my phone, and gives me lots of information when I get a trouble code. It’s great for going a step beyond simply getting the code number, it actually helps with diagnosis, too.

42% Off: BlueDriver Pro Next Gen OBD2 Scanner ($74.94)

See It

If you’re looking for a simple, low-cost, self-contained scanner that packs a high level of functionality into a compact device, check out the Foxwell NT301 (20% off for Prime Day). At $55.99 on sale, it’s significantly more capable than the cheapo OBD scanners you’ll find for less at an auto parts store. The Foxwell brand has been recommended to me by some independent BMW specialists I buy stuff from; I pick it over the many other similar-level options with confidence.

20% Off: Foxwell NT301 Compact Pro Scanner ($55.99)

See It

The post Amazon Prime Day OBD Scanner Deals: Top Three Best Buys appeared first on The Drive.

The Etenwolf S6, a heavy-duty self-contained tire inflator (and the inflator of choice of the off-road school I work at here in Ulster County) is a great buy at $104.49 right now. That’s 35% off the $159.99 list price for Amazon Prime Day (June 23-26), grab one while they’re this cheap!

35% Off: Etenwolf S6 Inflator/Charger is just $104.49

See It

You’re saving $55.50 with this deal, which is a great score on a tool that actually feels premium (unlike plenty of other low-cost inflators you’ll find on Amazon or in auto parts stores.

The S6 has a dual-cylinder motor providing 1.5 CFM (42 L/Min) of airflow, which can reinflate a 31-inch truck tire from 30 to 35 PSI in about a minute. There’s also an integrated air bleeder valve that makes it easy to set tire pressures downward.

My favorite features are the set-and-forget (no need to hold down a trigger, just set your PSI target and wait) and active cooling. It cools itself while it runs, so you don’t have to wait for it to relax after a little inflation, and it works pretty quickly.

For power specs, it has 19,200 mAh of juice and 45W PD fast charging. Etenwolf says it can inflate “up to 18 F-150 tires on a single charge,” and recharges in about two hours. It can also fast-charge tablets or laptops, making it quite a handy little onboard item.

It’s a really solid inflator for about $100, and Etenwolf even promises a 10-year lifespan “under heavy use,” which is impressive. I’ve been using them for about a year and haven’t noticed any degradation in performance.

Looking for a gas station with a working tire inflation station is the absolute worst. Throw one of these in your car and always be able to top off pressure or battery power on another device. Buy one this week and save yourself over $50.

The post One of Our Favorite Off-Road Tire Inflators Is 35% Off for Amazon Prime Day appeared first on The Drive.

Turo, the Airbnb for cars, is doing a pretty fun deal where select Italian car rentals are just $23 a day this weekend. The theme is “Turo Takes Italy to the Game.” See, Italy is not actually represented in the World Cup, so the brand is proverbially getting the European nation in the mix with this little promo.

As Turo shared with us: “Beginning June 17 at midnight ET, Turo will make the ‘Italy’s Starting XI’ dream car lineup available to book on a first-come, first-served basis across 11 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Vancouver. One car per market, available for trips from June 19 at 10 am local time through June 22 at 10 am local time.”

You can check out the offerings on Turo’s rental page. Word to the wise: The Turo app works a lot better than the website, so if you’re really looking to book something, I’d switch over to pull the trigger. One more bonus bit of insider knowledge: Some Chase credit cards are currently running cash-back deals where you get a little statement credit after booking a Turo car with your Chase card, so make sure that’s activated on your bank account page if that applies to you.

More details from the peer-to-peer car rental company:

“The voyage celebrates Italy’s cultural influence, craftsmanship, and passion that have made the nation a global icon in both sport and automotive design. As a way for fans to engage with the campaign and further represent the country at the games, Turo is also dropping “Italy’s Starting XI” lineup. The collection features 11 distinctive Italian vehicles ranging from an exotic Lamborghini to a vintage Ferrari to iconic Fiats available across 11 U.S. and Canadian tournament host cities. Each vehicle will be available to rent on Turo for just $23 per day (before taxes & fees) in honor of the tournament’s 23rd edition.”

Whether or not you care about soccer, the handful of people who are able to pounce on this in time are getting a pretty incredible deal. The lineup is pretty imbalanced, though—the Seattle market gets a Ferrari 458 Italia while Atlanta has to make do with a Fiat 500L. Looks like somebody already claimed the Lamborghini Huracan Evo in Miami, but you might still be able to grab one of the other offerings.

The post A Lamborghini for $23? Turo’s Renting Italian Cars Crazy-Cheap as a World Cup Promo appeared first on The Drive.

Amazon Prime Day (officially June 23 to 26 this year, but there’s always spillover before and after) is a great opportunity to grab deals on cool stuff. But now more than ever, the site is also flooded with no-name junk nobody needs. I got my hands on a colossal master-list of SKUs that Amazon has marked as extra-incentivized to move, and deleted all the garbage—what’s left is still over 2,500 items, which I’ve organized by brand to help you rummage through and find gems.

While Prime Day deals are, of course, public, this list is a little sneakier. This is everything Amazon is trying to push hard on e-commerce retailers, in other words, what the online megastore wants to get out the door soon, but has not disclosed specific deal details on. I strongly suspect we will see deals here in the coming days; there’s just no way to know exactly when.

As you scroll this, you might find yourself thinking this list looks kind of random—tools, car accessories, apparel, and computer stuff? The logic I applied to filter these is actually quite simple: Cool stuff from known brands that I think The Drive readers might be into, based on my personal intuition, buying habits, and years of experience. I used AI to make the hyperlinks, but the actual curation was all me, all human.

I absolutely love digging through discount racks and bins at stores to find good brands and interesting products—that’s basically what I’ve set you up to do with this mega-length list. I recommend speed-scrolling until a brand you like catches your eye, or, hit command/control-F and type what you might be looking for. You could also try giving an AI agent like Claude, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini the link to this post and asking it to look for products in a specific category you might be interested in. Unfortunately, table filters are beyond the capabilities of what we can display directly.

I don’t know exactly when these items will go on sale or what their exact discounts will be. E-commerce research is one of my many duties here at The Drive, and my intel has indicated there will be deals to be had, but I can’t get more specific than that yet. Rest assured, I will call out specific sales in separate posts on our Deals page as they come up.

For now, take a peek and save links!

The post Deal Hunter Intel: The Secret List of Stuff Amazon Is Eager To Move, Minus the Junk appeared first on The Drive.