The Best New Gadgets for Cars

Be honest: how many times have you completely ignored a car alarm horn going off? One of the best new gadgets for cars undertakes the not insignificant task of changing that apathetic reaction. For under $200 Bim Bam Banana offers an alarm system for your vehicle that is guaranteed to get the attention of anyone who accidentally bumps into your car. This little novelty gadget doesn’t issue forth a piercing James Brown-style siren cry for attention, but rather engages the sly use of humor. Hit a car with this gadget equipped and you will hear such prerecorded messages as “Please help me!” or “You are too close to my vehicle, please move away!”

Obviously, the point of this alarm system is to personalize the experience of interaction with another driver, but most of the time you won’t be there to enjoy the reaction. That is where another way cool gadget for your car comes in. Let’s face it, most people either hate or love emoticons, those little faces to register emotions using those symbols found at the very top of your computer keyboard. Well, if you love emoticons (or if you loathe them and just want to tick off other drivers) why not get yourself the Driving LED Emoticon, which is a battery-powered sign you hang in your rear window that allows you to send messages to those drivers behind you. Control is done remotely from a unit you can keep in the front seat with you. Simply press a few buttons your sign will be displaying messages that include both “Thanks” for those who let you in front of them and “Idiot” for those who sped up to try to cut you off. You can also punch in corresponding emoticons: from behind the sign bears a slight resemblance to a glowing Jack O’Lantern.

Let’s say you don’t really want to communicate with other drivers, but you do need a cool gadget for communicating with others while inside your car. There is almost nothing on the market quite as useful and cool as the Modoofree Bluetooth parking sensor. This device allows you to connect any Bluetooth-enable cell to your rearview mirror. When a call comes through, that number is actually presented on the mirror. As if that weren’t wild enough, the device also comes with a high quality speaker and a microphone that enables you to answer the incoming phone call without so much as lifting your hands from the steering wheel, or having to look away from any part of the car you normally must be vigilant about while in traffic. But guess what? Even that is not the end of what this incredibly nifty little car gadget is capable of doing. The Modoofree Bluetooth device comes equipped with parking sensors integrated into the Bluetooth that are connected to sensors attached to your bumpers. Once you shift into reverse these sensors measure the distance you’ve got between your bumper and the nearest object to them, whether a curb or another car, and this distance is then displayed on your rearview mirror.

Another cool car gadget is the latest entry in the seemingly never-ending search for a way to keep that increasingly large pile of stuff we now must carry with us at a hand’s distance away conveniently close. SmartPad silicone grip pads need no adhesive, nor do they work through the magic of magnets. Easily positioned and repositioned on your dashboard to facilitate your own personalized and changing needs, these 7.5″ by 5″ space savers are perfect for placing everything from pens to your cell phone for easy and non-dangerous retrieval. You may come up with more astounding car gadgets and maybe even more useful ones, but it would be hard to come up with another car gadget that is both cool and useful with a price tag under $10.00. Not only that, but the SmartPad silicone grips are durable; with a little soap and water and elbow grease that ten buck investment made by gripping whatever wild and kooky gadgets you’ll need easy access to inside your in another few years.