Ah, the holiday season. Sure, we all complain about the crass commercialism of it all, but there’s still something nice about giving and receiving gifts — particularly, those that show someone really pays attention to the things you love. Say, for example, cars. Last week, we asked you for the best automotive gifts you’ve ever received, and today we’re combing through your answers to pick out the best.
My wife got me an exotic car driving experience at New Jersey Motorsports Park. Granted it was only two laps but to push a Ferrari F430 around track and get it up to 120 on the front straight was really memorable.
Doing 120 in any car is memorable. Doing it behind the wheel of a Ferrari, on track, must make for one hell of a gift.
A 40 Channel CB Radio from Sears.
The ‘70s were a weird time, don’t judge....
As someone who watched Smokey And The Bandit too many times at too formative an age, I will never judge anyone for their CB radio desires. I had one myself in high school, in my Wrangler. In the early 20teens. The seventies were way more normal.
On my 16th birthday (and my birthday is Christmas Eve), my grandfather officially handed me the keys to his 1975 Chevrolet Scottsdale 10 longbed pickup. We’d spent the summer before giving it a bad paint job in my favorite color (GM Medium Bahama Blue Metallic), installing blue carpet, tuning it up, and working on a half-dozen other little problems with it, and that day, I got to drive it home. It was a badly rusted old thing under the paint and Bondo, had no A/C, no radio (something 16-year-old-me fixed quickly), and no heat, but it was mine. I kept it for ten years before I parted the old girl out.
Please tell me you matched that blue paint and blue carpet with a blue dash and blue seats. If you’re going to commit to a theme, commit to it.
Weathertech floormats and the exact steering wheel cover I asked for. Rubber floormats are the absolute best, especially with small children.
It’s nice to keep the inside of your car clean. It’s even nicer when someone else thinks about keeping your car clean, and helps make it easy for you.
Yeah, I know you all are going to have stories of getting dream cars or giving your boomer dad the Vette he always wanted but put off so he could raise you, but nothing will be better than the sweet factory equalizer for my Integra that I got for Christmas back in 1989.
Whether digital or analog, every car needs a good EQ. This easily beats out any boomer-bait Vette.
Tools for sure because actual car parts are hard to buy even if you own and know the car sometimes, let alone someone who doesn’t.
My parents gave me basically nothing but tools for birthdays and Christmas for probably a decade and I loved it! I have a full tool chest of just about every tool you could reasonably need to work on a car now and I maybe bought 10% of it. My dad is a car guy though so he really set me up over the years.
My tool collection is honestly one of my prized possessions because of where it came from and just how useful it has been over the years. I would probably be more upset if someone stole my tools than if someone stole my car.
Cars are insured, they can be replaced. Tools, though, grow with you. The handles mold to your hand, the muscle memory trains you on certain implements.
My (now-late) parents knew that my 19 year-old 1991 Mazda Navajo LX (basically the sh@tty Ford Explorer Sport) was in a state of slow mechanical decay. I wasn’t a kid, I had university and doctoral degrees, but I wasn’t thriving financially and had been laid-off during the Great Recession. It was 201o and they “sold” me their 1997 Infiniti I30t for $1 (plus airfare from Burbank to Las Vegas where they lived. I insisted on it being a sale due to some personal income issues and wanted to make sure the transfer and ownership was 100% Kosher.
It was, for me, real luxury: leather upholstery, power seats/etc., functional A/C (fergawdsakes, I was living in Glendale, CA, nearly as hot as Vegas in the summer), CD player (truly an upgrade from cassette tapes), about 80,000 fewer miles, more power, more fun to drive, better handling (duh) and better mileage (double duh). Sure, it didn’t have 4WD and a big cargo area but I wasn’t living in Nor. Cal. anymore and didn’t have a dog (sigh). Anyways, it’s the best automotive gift I ever received.
Having never seen a Mazda Navajo before, at least knowingly, I have to say: This goes hard. I love this little truck. I’m shopping for these now, and I hate you for having done this to me.
Back in high school my girlfriends dad would always get me tools for anything, birthday, Christmas, Easter, etc. its how I started my tool collection.
I have since upgraded a lot but I still have the large orange tool box that was part of the first gift from him and I will cherish it forever.
Recently my wife supported my choice to sell my 1 year old Impreza to fund buying back my 07 Pontiac Solstice GXP that I had to surrender due to a bankruptcy before we were married. It was around my birthday and I was able to track the car down in Maryland and we bought it sight unseen and picked it up on a road trip. The drive home with my kids in my car that I never thought I would see again was priceless. Unfortunately after I got it home I drove it 3 times before she went up in a cloud of smoke (fried rings, at least it explained the oil consumption issue) so now its parked while I compile parts for an LS swap that I’ll be doing with my kids! (A project car the gift that keeps on giving!)
Nothing like a broken-down car to bring the family together. Or tear it apart. Depends on how many parts you have to home-fabricate, really.
Simply a 6quart case of oil. Synthetic Havoline 5w30. Most car gifts are kinda impractical. This was just impractically given...
In college, I casually said I needed to do an oil change on my car while I was home with my parents (access to a garage and jack). My father bought a 6qy case of oil, wrapped it expertly - bow, ribbon, and the creases of the paper were perfect. (former artist), and it was opened Christmas morning. I thought it was funny enough, I left it unopened under the tree while I was there (ended up using other stashed oil). He passed away a few year later.
I still have it unopened in my garage as a quasi-monument. Havoline 5w30 synthetic.
I gotta say, Havoline is a new one for me. I’ve heard of Valvoline, sure, but Havoline? It’s like half a valve.
The best car gift for me would be a tie . . .
In 1968, while running track for my high school PE class, I stopped to help an elderly lady when her 1955 Cadillac stopped running. I was able to get it running and helped her put it back into the garage. She asked me for my name and address, and sent me a thank you card.
20 years later, I was contacted by an attorney who asked me if I remembered that day. When I said yes, I remember Ms. X and her Cadillac, he told me she had left me her treasured Cadillac 60s sedan, loaded with all options including 2X4 carb engine and factory A/C. It was still in the garage, having done only about 45,000 miles, and it started right up.
The other gift was when in 1987, my best friend, knowing he was dying of a rare and always fatal disease, gave me his Facel Vega before he passed away.
Both are equal in all respects.
There’s something special about obtaining a car through inheritance. It grants the vehicle a kind of meaning that it wouldn’t otherwise have.
ACE hardware gift cards. Ace has great tools and everything else you might need aside from car parts. And some of them have a great selection of automotive hardware like all the different fasteners, including the various plastic trim fasteners, rivets, nuts, bolts for both domestic and Japanese cars at least. I can get them from the automotive paint supplier, but they’re expensive-er and only in bulk. So definitely ACE gift cards, or any hardware store that isn’t Home Despot.
I’ll do you one better — support your local hardware store. Sometimes the best you can do in your locale is an Ace franchise, but often you can find a shop owned by one guy who’s been there for approximately four hundred years. Support that guy.
New tools, I got a set of Makita 18V brushless tools this year that included the 1/4" hex impact wrench and the surprisingly useful power ratchet. This differs from the well known Milwaukee by using a roller clutch instead of a ratchet so it doesn’t click and it also has interchangeable 3/8" and 1/4" drives.
Not to be confused with He-Man’s Sword of Power, or She-Ra’s Princesses of Power, or Lord of the Rings’ Rings of Power. Totally different power over here.
A wash kit. Like five or six different Armor All products in one box. I don’t wash my car as often as I should but at least now when I do I can be a little more thorough about it.
You have no idea how hard it was to find an image for this slide. Every single royalty-free image for “car wash” is either an automated/touchless system, or just unbelievably horny. Can we not just wash cars ourselves normally? Why’s it gotta be all objectified?
Woke up to one of these on Christmas morning when I was 6 (1973). It was pretty cool.
As a kid, I always wanted a race car bed. As an adult, I realize that a bed with storage is far more practical, but the temptation isn’t not there.