1995 Honda Prelude S on 2040-cars

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Online Find Of The Day: 1998 Honda Accord Dually shows a melange of influences

The vehicles that we choose to drive make a statement about who we are, and this insanely styled, custom 1998 Honda Accord is certainly going to say something about the next owner. The seller in this Craigslist ad claims this "is something that you will never see again," and there's no arguing about that. If you're looking for attention and notoriety, then this Honda is more effective than driving around in any Ferrari or Porsche. First, everyone can see you coming in this thing. With two banks of LEDs on the hood, a 44-inch light bar on the roof and cab lights, this Accord must look like a meteorite burning up in the atmosphere with all of its illumination on at night. In addition, the boat air horns, PA speaker, backup beeper and the unholy noise from the Bosozoku-influenced exhaust stack should make stealth an impossibility. Making friends isn't a problem, either, because with eight CB whip antennas positioned around the car, you're sure to hear every trucker in a tri-state area. Despite the Accord being front-wheel drive, the builder finished this masterpiece off with a dually rear end and fender flares. Don't worry about seeing the utter shock on people's faces when they notice, because the Dodge tow mirrors should provide plenty of rear visibility. The seller claims there's nothing wrong with the car, and he's accepting trades or reasonable offers. Autoblog has called to see how much the owner wants for it and to see what inspired them to go to such extremes. We'll update this story if we hear back.

Honda Ridgeline spy shots show more truck-like lines

Honda is preparing to roll out its all-new, second-generation Ridgeline. And while we've seen several hints at what it will look like, this is our best look yet. This prototype has dropped all the heavy body cladding and shows its overall shape. As you can see from these latest spy shots, the new Honda Ridgeline will adopt a more conventional form than the model it replaces. So while it still has a bit of a flying buttress behind the C-pillar and above the front of the pickup bed, it looks nowhere near as deep and enveloping one on the outgoing model. The bed also appears to incorporate lighting into its liner. The new Ridgeline still appears to optimize the quad-cab to short-bed ratio proportions. However it looks set to compete more actively in the resurgent midsize pickup market than its segment-defying predecessor. In that regard, Honda aims to more directly take on the likes of the Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, and Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon. What we can't see from these spy shots are details like the lights and grille treatment. However the Baja show truck revealed at SEMA mere weeks ago provided glimpses at those elements. Combine that with the still-camouflaged prototype pictured here, and we're starting to get a pretty solid idea of what the four-door pickup will look like once it reaches production. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Acura 1.6 EL

Drivers from Mexico or Canada who take their cars across the border into the United States may drive them legally here for one year, after which they must drive back home or go through a registration process that ranges from arduous to impossible, depending on the state. As a result, quite a few Canadian- and Mexican-market cars end up marooned and un-registerable here, and I find some of them during my junkyard travels. Today, we've got a Canada-only Acura that showed up in a Northern California boneyard recently. I'm always looking for junkyard odometers with very high final readings (right now a 631k-mile Volvo 240 holds the record), and at first glance I though I had come across a Civic sedan with nearly 450,000 miles. Then I noticed the metric speedometer and realized that I was looking at a non-US-market car. 448,538 kilometers is 278,709 miles, by the way. A look at the build tag and emissions stickers showed that this car was built and sold in Canada. I'd found a second-generation Acura EL in a Colorado junkyard a few years back, so I knew that I'd just found a first-generation EL. Like its Acura Integra contemporary, the Acura EL was based on the Honda Civic. It replaced the Integra in Canada for 1997 and production continued through 2005. It differed somewhat in appearance from the Civic and had a nicer interior but was mechanically nearly identical to the US-market Civic EX sedan. A version for the Japanese market was built in Canada and exported across the Pacific as the second-generation Honda Domani. The engine is a 1.6-liter SOHC four-banger with VTEC, rated at 127 horsepower and 107 pound-feet. This one appears to be a loaded EL Premium, with the optional four-speed automatic. List price would have been C$22,000, or about $30,676 in 2023 United States dollars (using the exchange rate for June of 1997). The decklid had an EL-only spoiler, so a local Honda expert must have bought it for a Civic sedan. Since this car was old enough to be federally legal under the 25-year rule, it could have been registered legally in some US states… but California's strict emissions regulations would have made the process too difficult to be worth undertaking on a near-300k-mile machine that isn't particularly exotic.