Things We Used To Keep In The Car: The Forgotten Essentials Of British Motoring

There was a time when getting into the car meant entering a small, mobile storage cupboard. Not because we were particularly organised, but because we seemed to believe that absolutely anything might come in useful one day.

Modern cars are remarkably clever. They can tell you where you are, warn you about traffic, connect to your phone, play almost any song you can think of and, in some cases, practically drive themselves. But take a look around an older car and you would often find a collection of objects that told a very different story.

Some of them were genuinely useful. Others had been sitting there for so long that nobody could quite remember why they were there in the first place. And if you grew up in the 70s, 80s or 90s, there is a good chance that some of these things will bring back very specific memories.

The road atlas

Before Google Maps, sat navs and phones that knew exactly where you were, there was the road atlas.

Every car seemed to have one, usually wedged into the door pocket or tucked underneath a seat. It was often a substantial book, full of roads, junctions and tiny place names that were almost impossible to find when you were travelling at speed.

The passenger was generally responsible for navigation. This sounded simple enough until someone announced that they had missed the turning three miles ago. Then came the inevitable discussion about whether the map had been read correctly, whether the driver had been given the right instructions and whose fault it was that nobody knew where they were.

There was also the special art of refolding a road map. It never seemed to return to its original shape, leaving you with a large, crumpled sheet of paper that eventually got pushed into the glovebox.

A torch that may or may not work

A torch was another classic car essential.

It was usually kept in the glovebox for emergencies, although finding it when you actually needed it was another matter. The batteries had often been in there for years, meaning the torch either produced a faint yellow glow or refused to work altogether.

Still, having a torch made you feel prepared. Breaking down after dark suddenly became slightly less frightening because there was a reassuring little piece of technology somewhere in the car that was supposed to help.

Of course, there was always a chance that the batteries had leaked, the bulb had gone or somebody had borrowed it and never put it back.

The cassette collection

For anyone who remembers driving before smartphones and Bluetooth, the car stereo was a major part of the experience.

The cassette box could contain anything from carefully recorded radio programmes to treasured albums, compilation tapes and homemade mixes. Some tapes were labelled properly. Others had handwritten titles that became increasingly difficult to decipher over time.

There was also the problem of the tape getting chewed by the stereo. One moment you were happily listening to your favourite song and the next you were staring at a tangled mess of brown tape emerging from the machine.

A biro became an essential piece of technology at that point. Carefully winding the tape back onto the cassette with a pen was a skill that many people learned without ever being formally taught.

The emergency coat

There was often a coat in the car.

Not necessarily a good coat, either. It was usually something old that had been retired from everyday use and promoted to emergency clothing.

You never really knew how long it had been there. It might have been left in the boot after a football match, a country walk or a particularly cold evening. Eventually it became part of the car’s permanent equipment.

The same applied to jumpers, scarves and hats. The boot could effectively become a seasonal wardrobe, just in case the weather suddenly turned.

And in Britain, of course, it usually did.

The carrier bag collection

Before reusable shopping bags became part of everyday life, plastic carrier bags had a remarkable ability to reproduce inside cars.

There would be one in the glovebox, several in the boot and another collection lurking in the side pockets. They were used for everything from rubbish to muddy shoes, wet clothes and the occasional emergency collection of something that definitely should not have been rolling around loose in the boot.

Some families even had a dedicated bag full of smaller bags.

It was not especially glamorous, but it was incredibly practical.

Coins for absolutely everything

The car often contained a small collection of loose change.

Coins were needed for car parks, shopping trolleys, parking meters and, depending on the era, payphones. They would accumulate in ashtrays, door pockets and the little compartments that modern cars now use for entirely different purposes.

The ashtray itself often stopped being an ashtray and became a general-purpose coin storage facility.

Finding exactly the right amount for a car park was strangely satisfying. Finding that you were missing ten pence after already driving around looking for a space was considerably less satisfying.

The glovebox full of paperwork

The glovebox was another fascinating place.

It contained documents that were apparently important but were rarely looked at. Insurance paperwork, breakdown information, old maps, service records, instruction manuals and receipts could all end up together.

There might also be an owner’s manual so large that it appeared to contain instructions for rebuilding the entire car from scratch.

Over time, the glovebox became less of a storage compartment and more of an archaeological site. Every few years someone would empty it and discover documents relating to cars the family had not owned for ages.

A cassette adaptor, CD wallet or portable radio

As technology changed, so did the things we carried around.

There was a period when a cassette adaptor seemed like an amazing invention. You could connect a portable music player to the car stereo and suddenly your own music could travel with you.

Then came CD wallets.

These were often enormous collections containing dozens of discs, carefully arranged into little plastic sleeves. Choosing what to listen to involved physically looking through the collection rather than simply asking a phone to play something.

You could spend ten minutes searching for a particular album, only to discover that the CD was still sitting in the stereo at home.

A spare pair of shoes

The boot was often home to footwear that had acquired a second life.

Old trainers, walking shoes, wellies and sometimes a pair of completely inexplicable shoes could be found lurking among the other essentials.

They were there for emergencies. Perhaps you needed to walk somewhere muddy. Perhaps you were going to the beach. Perhaps your normal shoes had become uncomfortable.

The important thing was that you had options.

Nobody questioned why there were three different pairs of shoes in the boot. They were simply part of the car.

The mysterious boot contents

Every family car seemed to have a mysterious collection of objects in the boot.

There might be an old blanket, a football, a folding chair, a screwdriver, a tow rope, a half-empty bottle of screenwash and something nobody could identify.

There was always a reason for everything. Or at least there had been at some point.

The problem was that nobody could remember what the reason was.

The boot gradually became a storage area for things that might be useful one day. And because they were already in the car, there was no urgency to work out what they actually were.

The emergency food and drink

Long journeys required provisions.

A flask of tea was practically part of the national infrastructure, while bottles of squash, cartons of juice and packets of crisps could all find their way into the car.

There were also the sweets reserved specifically for travelling. The journey somehow justified buying treats that would not normally appear in the shopping basket.

And then there was the inevitable sticky bottle left in the door pocket.

By the time it was discovered, nobody wanted to investigate exactly how long it had been there.

The car as a second home

Perhaps what is most interesting about all these things is that they made the car feel less like a machine and more like an extension of the home.

We kept things there because we expected to spend time in the car. It was where we travelled, waited, listened to music, ate snacks, argued about directions and occasionally sat in silence while someone tried to work out where we had gone wrong.

Today, many of those physical objects have disappeared because our phones have replaced so many of them. Maps, music, entertainment, directions, weather forecasts and even torches can now be carried in a device that fits into your pocket.

The glovebox is probably tidier as a result.

But perhaps something has been lost along the way. There was a certain charm to being prepared for almost anything with a collection of slightly battered objects that had accumulated over the years.

The road atlas, the cassette box, the emergency coat, the torch with questionable batteries and the mysterious carrier bag collection might not have looked particularly impressive, but together they told the story of how we travelled.

And if you grew up with them, you probably still have at least one of those things lurking somewhere.

Maybe not in the car anymore.

Perhaps in the garage.

And you are probably keeping it because, one day, it might come in handy.

What was the strangest, most useful or completely unnecessary thing you remember keeping in the car?