What do you carry in the cabin of your car? And what do you need to be able to get at while you're driving it? Johnson Controls, a supplier of car interior modules, among other things, has done some research to find out.
It polled around 2000 drivers from Europe, the US and Japan. The number one item is not the mobile phone that you might expect, but sunglasses. Almost 40 per cent of the respondents considered a pair of sunglasses to be vital, presumably to dull a glaring sun or perhaps to make their owners look that little bit cooler.
The next four items were considered essential by just over a quarter of the sample apiece. Leading the trailing pack were mobile phones, which has you wondering how many are handling them on the move.
That portable sat-navs come third demonstrates that, while plenty of new cars have them as standard, there are millions of us still suckering TomToms and Garmins to windscreens; the fourth placed item was a drink bottle of some kind.
In fifth place were insurance documents and the car’s papers, which possibly need to be more readily available in other countries.
What did the company learn from this? First, that plenty of customers would like specific storage locations for regularly used items, particularly phones and electronic devices.
No surprise there, given how many cars still don’t have a rubberized tray deep enough to stop your mobile taking flight during a cornering manoeuvre. Most of us resort to cupholders for this job, which is often the receptacle for the keys of ignition-less cars, too.
It also learned that SUV, MPV and crossover owners can never have enough storage zones for their stuff. And that there are some variations by continent in our in-cabin storage desires. Americans want somewhere to put their garage door remote, for example, and Europeans somewhere to put their glasses cases.
So what do you keep in your car? Let me know below.
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Quite a long list this...
Other than the things already
Odds and ends
Cloth for wiping the dipstick, wet wipes for hands, can of oil, large bottle of water, fuses, tyre pressure gauge, small compressor, de-icer and scraper, mobile phone and charger, tissues, RAC membership card, sat-nav and charger.
Need to get a fuel can, though.