Big toolkits, accesory from the past...

I really wish I had taken photos, but the Lada Niva I used to own had a leather tool roll with a few spanners, screwdriver, pliers etc. They all had what I assume to be "made in USSR" stamped on them in the Cyrillic alphabet and were the chunkiest, most durable hand tools I have ever seen.....very Russian - make everything simple and tough enough to survive a nuclear blast.

Jaguar E-type:


Maserati Sebring:


Bugatti dealer tool kit:


Alfa Guilietta

Love how the Maserati toolkit has TWO hammers! ;D

They also had the foresight to put a drinks holder next to the fuses, just the right size for a glass of Pimms.

Alfa Giocattolo tool kit - comes with artificial courage.

Is that Bundy rum? Must need some serious courage to open an Alfa tool kit then!!

The one in my Volvo is pretty basic (although its good quality) but you never need it anyway so it's fine.

Cool thread concept right there!

Mazda obviously figured the owners of their rotary cars would be needing to use a toolkit a lot.... They did a good job of stowing it all away at least. Clearly reasoning that the boot was so small and shallow that the average RX-7 owner could barely carry a set of golf shoes, let alone clubs, they reckoned they could get away with intruding even further into the stowage space by fitting the toolkit into cubbyholes either side. In this photo you can see the neat lids in the black surround either side of the boot...



yeah, it doesn't help the practicality that my boot is half-full anyway, what with CD changer, battery, folding chair for those footsore carshow moments, can of oil (because rotary engine), wheel centre spanner, long pole to hold the boot open cos I still haven't got round to replacing the knackered gas struts... oh, and Mazda didn't lower themselves to include a warning triangle because they knew what a resourceful bunch us rotards are and knew we wouldn't be stranded for long, lol. That's why I had to get a ridiculously expensive but beautifully engineered Audi one

Anyway, the nearside cubby has a range of tools in it, stored neatly in two layers of specially moulded polystyrene (this car was all about weight saving, after all);





...and the offside has the low-mount jack in it. This is a brilliant tool, it retracts the platform almost inside itself so you can get it under even stupidly low cars. It's almost as if they knew...

It is Bundy, the Giocattolo is an Australian car. At first i thought it was to give the driver the courage to chuck it about, but perhaps you're meant to open it when you realise you can't fix it.