Make Tracks

The city of New York is a dangerous place at night and this episode opens with two bad-ass punks checking out a nice blue car. Seconds later they decide to steal it and after breaking the door locks open easily they get inside and start to drive off. One of the punks finds a funky boom box on the back seats.
 

The punks head to a garage where they intend to sell the car to a guy called Winston. As he starts to count up the money he'll pay them for it the car suddenly transformers: it's Tracks! The humans split up and run but they don't realise that the boom box is a Transformer also until Blaster reveals his robot mode.
 

The two punks are caught and as Winston legs it Optimus Prime rolls up and simply stands there as he is shot by the crook's pathetic firearm. After throwing down his gun and surrendering the cops arrive to take the bad dudes away. The Sergeant thanks the Autobots for their help as the level of crime in New York has dropped dramatically.
 

Sparkplug apparently has a garage in New York now and it also contains a hidden mini-base for the Autobots, so Prime, Tracks and Blaster head back there. Tracks immediately enter his snob mode and it becomes clear that he'd rather hang out with humans than Autobots. Meanwhile Prime is worried as they haven't seen any Decepticons for quite some time, so he sends Powerglide, Cosmos and Seaspray out to search for them. He then sees Tracks leaving and questions where he is going, only to find out that he needs some air.
 

Tracks goes out for a ride only to be almost immediately stolen again when a gang appears. He chases them but they whip out guns and one lucky shot hits one of his wheels, causing him to lose control and crash into a lamppost. Track's hood is ruined and he can't transform, and then to make things worse some people arrive and take him away!
 

Two of the guys leave but the other man, Raoul, takes a good look at the car and decides to try and repair it. Seconds in to his work though he is astonished when the car starts to talk to him! Tracks wants to be repaired but is almost shut down good when Raoul accidentally cuts the cable that leads to his main CPU, but he puts it back together. Raoul can't quite believe what is happening but he explains that he needs to get a car to the Geddis brothers by midnight or bad things will happen to him.
 

Meanwhile the other Autobots out on patrol haven't found anything interesting with neither Seaspray or Powerglide being able to find what the Decepticons are up to. The only thing remotely interesting for the Autobots so far is that Cosmos has found a car crash. Prime tells them to keep looking and to also look out for Tracks as he has no idea where he is either.
 

Meanwhile Raoul finishes work on the amazing talking car he has found and wonders whether or not to hand him over to the Geddis brothers or not but two goons of the gang arrive and want to know where their new set of wheels is. Tracks then arrives to help out and scares the thugs by transforming into a robot. They flee, shouting that they thought the robots were on their side, and head off in their own car but Tracks transforms again, takes Raoul with him and shows that he can fly as they go after the bad guys.
 

Sadly they lose sight of them though but Tracks still wants to find out what they were up too as from what they said earlier they must be working with the Decepticons. Tracks then finds out more about the Geddis brothers and that they are stealing a lot of cars for some reason. Raoul knows where these stolen cars are being stored so they head out to a warehouse and see a lot of cars being transported over a bridge, so they follow. Meanwhile, Powerglide and Cosmos finally find a Decepticon and start chasing Starscream.
 

Starscream transforms and runs into a department store building and the two Autobots follow him. However things don't go well inside as Starscream gets the upper hand by shooting the pair off a balcony and making a clean getaway.
 

The two Autobots return to Prime and explain what happened and which direction they saw Starscream head last. Prime calculates that Starscream may be heading towards Pine Barrens in New Jersey, although what could be there is something they will have to find out. As it happens, Pine Barrens is where all the cars are been taken as Tracks and Raoul see the Geddis brothers wanting their million dollar reward for stealing cars for... Megatron! However, he just wants to shoot them.
 

You can guess who gets what they want but Tracks and Raoul are more concerned about the queue of cars they can see that Soundwave and Rumble are dealing with. Raoul gets out as Tracks goes down to join the queue by himself although he doesn't like the look of things when the two Decepticons start to push all of the cars onto a conveyer belt.
 

Tracks is right to be concerned as Scrapper is destroying the cars with a sword, but before he can get out of there his CPU power cable falls apart again so he can't move. Raoul is wondering why Tracks isn't fleeing and realises that something must be wrong so he runs down and says that that is his car and that he has a really great security feature in it: a bomb which will explode if anyone messes with his machine. Megatron tells Raoul that he will let him live if he disarms the bomb.
 

Raoul quickly puts the power lead back together and the pair run for it as the Decepticons see that they have been tricked, so Rumble and Ravage are sent out after them. Tracks doesn't get that far as he is low on energon and is cornered by the Decepticons, but Autobot reinforcements arrive to chase them away. They ask where Tracks has been all this time and Raoul steps forward to explain.
 

Tracks is taken back to the New York base for repairs and tells the others what happened. Teletraan-1 then finds some strange cars approaching so the Autobots move out to intercept. On a bridge, Prime, Blaster and Ratchet find a batch of these Decepticon cars and see that they can transform -the Decepticons have been making an army of transforming car drone. They aren't very smart though and their aim is even worse so the Autobots start to pick them off.
 

More Autobots find more Decepticon car robots to fight in the city but Ratchet finds out that from what he can tell, these new robots do not even have brains. Prime works out that they must be being controlled via remote so he has Blaster send out a jamming signal and sure enough, the car robots collapse.
 

The Autobots then return to Pine Barrens and stage a massive attack on the Decepticon car robot factory only for Raoul to run off inside by himself to try and smash up the main computer systems. Megatron catches him though and heads back outside where he demands that the Autobots drop their weapons, but as he babbles on he doesn't notice his hostage take out a can of spray paint and use it to shirt circuit him.
 

Megatron collapses so the Decepticons pick him up and retreat. With the base left defenceless the Autobots soon destroy it and all that is left to be done is repair all of the cars the Decepticons tampered with. The cars are taken back to Sparkplug's garage, and Sparkplug says it'll take weeks to repair them all even with Ratchet, Wheeljack and Hoist's assistance and that they could use extra help. Raoul sees that as his ideal time to leave but Tracks makes him stay behind to start putting the automobiles back together, which leads to bickering between the two as Raoul promises to never steal a car again -they're more trouble than their worth.

At several points in this episode a poster for Transformers/Transformer The Movie can be seen. At this point in the series the real movie would have been in production.

When Powerglide reports in to Prime for the first time, one of the buildings in the background has "Astoria" written on it. Cough.

In what is possibly the most bizarre scale error in the history of Transformers, Hoist is seen driving Huffer at one point.