Monthly Archives: August 2025

New Products in the Territorial Garage

I am occasionally sent products for review, and some of them are really cool and innovative. I’m leaving out the units that turned out to be flimsy or not worthy of your time, but here are some I quite liked.

CoverSeal Car Cover. I now own three collector-class cars, with the purchase of a 2006 Saab 9-5 SportCombi station wagon with an ultra-rare stick shift. It replaces my Mercedes 300TE wagon, which was similarly forced to sit outside because my 1993 Saab 900 Turbo convertible and 1999 Mazda Miata (both also manuals) have pride of place in the two-car garage.

I bought a cover for the Benz, but it was always getting blown off by the hefty winds we have around my part of Connecticut. But now I’m using a CoverSeal ($305) that should defeat that problem. It has a 360-degree weighted bottom that allows it to stay in place even when the winds are at 40 mph. Forget about tying the cover down with bungee cords or trying to secure it with cinder blocks.

The cover is also designed to guard against rodent damage, which is something else I’ve experienced. My Saab 900 had its old dash wiring completely stripped away by the little rodents, despite several traps and alleged mouse-repelling products. The idea is that the mice “will travel around the cover, realize there is no entry point, and move on in search of a more convenient shelter.”

We’ll see long-term if these notably smart so-and-sos are deterred. The bottom edge of the cover sits on the ground, but that’s OK because the 10-mil tarp is waterproof and doesn’t mind communing with the earth. The covers are loose fitting, which allows them to be blown around by the wind, displacing pooling water. Because they’re loose, they don’t need the mirror pockets that can be annoying to fit. The only color is silver, because it reflects 90 percent of sunlight.

The cover, which comes with a carrying bag, is a bit pricey, starting at $305. But if it keeps out water and rodents—and doesn’t blow off—it should prove its worth. CoverSeal was designed by collector Ken Huening, who tried garlic oil, dryer sheets and peppermint spray to keep out the little beasts. Huening was nonetheless hit with rat damage twice, to the tune of $20,000—they didn’t care about my little bag of rat-repellent seeds, either.

Etenwolf Vortex S6 Tire Inflator/Air Compressor. I wouldn’t use it to paint a car, but the Vortex S6 (there’s also an S7 model) is very handy to have around. I just used it to inflate tires on two bicycles, an e-bike, a plethora of pool rafts and floats, and a Saab that’s been sitting around. The 15,600-milliamp-hour unit is easily adjustable between car, bike, inflatables. It can be used as a portable charger for electronics, though you may have smaller power banks for that.

The S6 is best if you prize portability. The S7 has more power, with a faster inflation time and a bigger battery. Got a truck with oversized tires? The S7 is best for that duty.

On the S6, the two included hoses (one detachable) covered all the use cases I needed. There’s a built-in 1,000-lumen LED light, and on-board storage for the tips you’d otherwise lose. The Etenwolf seems solidly constructed. There’s a 90-day guarantee.

This small, not heavy unit is much easier to use and more efficient than the portable compressor I bought at the hardware store. I see it for $89.99.

TOPDON TopScan OBD2 Scanner Bluetooth. Versions of this product have been around for a while, but now it is more capable, and marked down as low as $51.29 at Amazon. The unit does quite a lot, considering its tiny size (like a cigarette pack). Just plug it into the OBD2 port and, after easy 5.0 Bluetooth pairing, the car owner can send commands from his or her cellphone directly to the car’s ECU to track down pesky problems. It also provides guidance for fixing what ails the vehicle. For some of the premium features, you need a subscription, which is a bit pricey.

Obviously, the scanner can read fault codes that are otherwise mysterious, and it can clear them, too. It can also, a mind blower for me, access factory technical bulletins. And measure speed performance before it breaks into a sweat. There are multiple display modes for the data, including charts, dials and just the raw numbers. The software will get regular updates. The unit is compatible with Android and IOS.

Mothers California Gold Ceramic line. I’m not really the concours type—if you see a dusty classic driving past, it’s probably me. I like one-step processes. This set came in a big white bucket with three products in it: Ceramic Wash and Wax. Ceramic Paint Correction, and Ceramic Spray Wax, each $17.99. The sudsy wash & wax is very hydrophobic, which means that it results in a finish that beads water. It’s easy to use and good at getting a shine out of faded paint. The product simply sprays on and then gets carefully wiped out, leaving a long-lasting ceramic layer. I applied it to three cars: a 2014 Toyota Prius V, a 1999 Mazda Miata and a 1993 Saab 900 Turbo. The results were quite pleasing, with not a lot of elbow grease.

The paint correction product goes after small scratches and scrapes, water spots, swirling, and other minor flaws. I applied it by hand to the Prius V and KOed a lot of minor imperfections. Little pock marks that looked permanent whisked away. The spray wax is for aprés-wash. Again, it just sprays on and gets wiped off, leaving a shiny ceramic surface that beads water. The package also included yellow microfiber towels and a wash mitt that proved useful.

Fender x Teufel Rockster Air 2 Portable Bluetooth Speaker. Whoa, yes, this big Fender, offered in partnership with German company Teufel, is portable—it has three handles, doesn’t it? But the 31-pound unit is on the heavy side of what can be reasonably carried.

But all was forgiven when I hooked it up to both a CD player and the music on my phone. It’s got deep bass, crisp trebles and tons of volume. It runs on house current, 12-volt power supplies or for 58 hours on batteries.

The Fender x Teufel is incredibly versatile. You can attach a guitar through the instrument input and blow the neighbor’s minds. You can play phone music, or attach any old-school music-making component (CD player, turntable, cassette, eight-track player) through the quarter-inch aux stereo jack. Need a PA system? There’s a microphone input.

While the Fender x Teufel isn’t strictly a car product, it can run on your car’s 12-volt system and sit on the front seat with you. Or just use those long-life batteries. If you own a classic and don’t want to replace the tinny AM radio that came with it, this Fender can be used and leave no marks.

Terry Waldo and the Gotham City Band at Zinc Bar

I told a friend I was going to hear some ragtime, and he said, “What, banjos and straw hats? Why would you want to listen to that corny stuff?” I tried to explain that ragtime is in at the foundation of jazz, and you need to understand the musical roots. But I wasn’t getting through.

Terry Waldo and the Gotham City Band play ragtime and nothing but, and they’ve made it work in New York with regular gigs at Zinc Bar (where I saw them August 7, part of an ongoing first Wednesday gig) and quite frequently at Arthur’s Tavern, both downtown. It’s possible for the music to sound remote when heard on a scratchy recording from 1915, but live it’s an absolute delight.

Waldo, a protégé of the great Eubie Blake, is an historian as well as a ragtime pianist. He is the author of This is Ragtime, the definitive treatment, most recently republished in a 2009 Jazz at Lincoln Center Library Edition. In addition to making 70 albums of ragtime and traditional jazz, he hosted an NPR show that is now available in podcast form on Waldo’s website.

At Zinc, the band was Jim Fryer on trombone, Daniel Glass on drums, Dan Pearson on clarinet and alto sax, and Konstantin Gevondyan on trumpet. All of them are master ragtime players, and both Pearson and Govindan (as well as Waldo) did some singing. They work together a lot, and finished each other’s sentences.

I asked for—and got—an opening of “Maple Leaf Rag.” A cliched choice, I know, but I wanted to hear it. It opened with Terry solo, and he played it with a lot of flourishes that I don’t always hear in renditions of this classic Scott Joplin tune. Then the band kicked in, expanding the palette. I didn’t realize, until Terry told me, that Joplin taught banjo and that early versions of his rags were often heard that way. But no banjo on stage, and no bass either. Acoustic basses were tough to record with early sound equipment, so sometimes a tuba replaced it.

Ragtime, at least the way these guys perform it, has plenty of hot solos, but the other horns feel free to chime in as support. “Oh By Jingo” is from 1919 (Albert Von Tilzer and Lew Brown, featured in the show Linger Longer Letty, and was a big Tin Pan Alley hit. David Bowie was inspired by it, and Hugh Laurie did a version. Waldo sang the novelty song with some vigor. Here, on video, is a Jelly Roll Morton song they did, called “Froggy Moore Rag”:

Next was W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” from 1910, with Fryer singing. It has a great line about the trombone player moaning like “a sinner on Revival Day.” Fryer recalls the great Jack Teagarden, but the latter was bluesier.  

Gevondyan was wonderful, chasing Louis Armstrong on trumpet and masterfully employing his cup mute. He sang “Sugar Blues” from 1919 (Clarence Williams/Lucy Fletcher) and didn’t sound anything like Louis, but still very nice. Glass should be cited, too, for his mastery of the snare.

Pearson sounded more in-period on his clarinet, but he was vastly entertaining on his more modern alto, too.

“Let’s Pray Against Somebody” is a Waldo original targeting religious hypocrisy, and reminiscent of the Fugs’ “Kill for Peace.” Or maybe Mark Twain’s “War Prayer,” which also points out the flip side of our heartfelt entreaties: “Help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead.”

And so it went, through Jelly Roll Morton’s “Why?,” Kid Ory’s “Ory’s Creole Trombone,” a headlong “Shake it and Break It” via Kid Oliver, “My Melancholy Baby,” and more. They dredged up a crazy old song called “Minnie the Mermaid,” written by Bud DeSylvia in 1923. It wasn’t all that bad, containing the line, “Down among the corals, I lost my morals.”  

It was a great night out in New York City. Don’t judge a whole genre until you hear it live, I say.