QOTD: What's Kept In Your Car?

by Tim Healey

Published: February 11th, 2025

Every week or so, I swap one test car for another. I dutifully lug a few small items -- usually sunglasses and a parking pass for my garage -- from one to the other.

Doing this mundane, boring ritual today I started thinking -- what do you keep IN your car?

To be clear, I mean things you leave in your car, not stuff you take with you when you park. So, for most of us, the cell phone won't count.

Maybe you've got hand sanitizer, or mints, or a toll tag, or a garage-door opener, kid's toys, or something like that. For the purposes of this question, let's not count things like a cupholder mount or dash cam mount or windshield phone mount. Nor shall we count car seats. Let's go with small items that you just leave in the car 99 percent of the time.

For me, it's sunglasses and the parking pass, as noted above. Hand sanitizer was part of my life for a while in 2020 and 2021.

What about you? Sound off below.

[Image: Filippo Carlot/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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5 of 59 comments

Lloyd Bonified on Feb 12, 2025

a kilo of blow

2 Reply
- See 2 previous
- FreedMike on Feb 12, 2025
  
  Those are rookie numbers.
  
  Like
- Spamvw on Feb 13, 2025
  
  Standard Equipment in a De Lorean.
  
  Like
- 3-On-The-Tree on Apr 24, 2025
  
  1995 SC- Ammo
  
  Like
Lou_BC on Feb 12, 2025

Tools, recovery gear, survival and first aid gear.

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