A few words about gadgets for your car

The shelves of car accessory shops are constantly packed with all sorts of pleasant gifts for your beloved car, which are becoming not so much a luxury as a genuine necessity. After all, every car accessory is created not only to maintain the car's appearance, but also to create comfort for its owner.

First of all, I'd like to mention engine oil. It can be counted among the ranks of car accessories, because, while it's just as integral a part of the car's system as, say, petrol, oil gets topped up noticeably less often.

That doesn't mean, however, that it's any less important a component.

It's worth keeping a close eye on matching your engine oil to the season, since failing to follow this rule can have negative consequences for how the car runs. So with the onset of winter, the first thing on the agenda should be switching to an oil suited to cold-weather operation.

The fact that in Russia there are precious few drivers who've spent any real time behind the wheel without a single speeding violation only confirms Gogol's words about Russians and fast driving. After the new fines for traffic violations took effect, drivers prone to "hooning" on the roads who'd rather not diligently pay up are left with two paths forward. The first is to spend the whole trip staring tensely at the road, on the lookout for the "familiar" silhouette of a traffic cop, or to make use of handy aids like radar detectors or radar jammers. These devices have long since become part of a driver's toolkit for dealing with traffic police checkpoints and the officers themselves, who now stand on duty not just with a whistle and a striped baton, but with a device for measuring a vehicle's speed.

The difference between a radar detector and a radar jammer is that the former simply alerts the driver to being within range of a radar, while a jammer, on top of that function, interferes with the operation of the device measuring the vehicle's speed. Some models can even feed the speed measuring device a predetermined speed reading, though naturally these aren't the cheapest options. It turns out that radar detectors are, in essence, passive receivers that merely pick up radio signals, while a jammer is an active device that generates powerful interference, so that you and I can drive past a checkpoint with a clear conscience. And for that, besides just having the device itself, you need confidence that it won't let you down and will work reliably. That's why we strongly recommend paying attention only to devices from manufacturers with a solid reputation.

If something about your car doesn't suit you, take a look at what you're missing for comfort, and at what's stopping you from feeling at home in the car.

Many car owners use car vacuum cleaners to keep the cabin clean. A car vacuum does both dry and wet cleaning with the help of special attachments.

Opinions among car owners about how effective this gadget is differ. Some think a vacuum really does help clear the cabin of all sorts of dirt, while others lean more toward considering it pointless. They base their view on the impossibility of thoroughly cleaning the cabin with a vacuum that runs off a 12-14 V power source. There's no clear-cut answer here as to "what's good and what's bad." All that can be added is that you're unlikely to get the kind of result you'd get from professional equipment at a car wash, but for quickly picking up debris (crumbs, husks and the like), it'll do the job perfectly well.

This is just a small fraction of car accessories, which in reality come in such countless numbers that they're gradually turning our cars from ordinary means of transport into something more.