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It’s all well and good to reminisce about the good old days but, chances are, we’re looking at another time through seriously tinted rose-colored glasses. Sure, more than a few of us used to bounce around on the bench seat of a station wagon or in the bed of a pickup truck but there’s no way anyone can argue in good faith that it was very safe.

It’s totally not a filled-with-soap myth that a clean car runs better, right? Except for off-road rigs. They run best when caked with a thick layer of sticky mud and dirt.

It’s a debate for the ages: should one put tools back in their place during a repair? One school of thought says that if you don’t, then they’re at hand and easy to reach. Others argue that the time spent walking back to the bench is well spent since you always know exactly where the tools are sitting. We’ll let you guess which side of the debate this author resides.

We’ll preface this post with the note that your humble author has never, and likely will never, have any canine livestock in his home. But plenty of people do, while continuing to maintain their gearhead status, explaining the presence of today’s list.

There are few irritants more exasperating in a car than listening to the rattle and swoosh of items rolling around in the cargo area of that vehicle. Whether it’s a bag of groceries or a box of tools, objects sliding to and fro with each turn of the steering wheel is an annoyance beyond compare.

Like car insurance, emergency kits are something no one wants to think about until it’s really needed. These compact sets are filled with the gear one might need should the unthinkable happen, leaving a person stranded or wrecked on the side of the road.

If you’re reading this and lucky enough to have an enclosed garage, we salute you. Owning a place in which to wrench on vehicles is an important life goal for a lot of gearheads; lying on one’s back and fixing transmissions in a mud puddle begins to lose its allure after about two hours.

It’s a common carp that today’s cars cannot be fixed with a simple hammer and some common tools. The days of Dave Bowman and Sam Memmolo doing a shade-tree fix on their buddy’s ’83 Monte Carlo are long gone, though pleasant memories remain of watching that show on Saturday mornings.

If we’re all being honest with ourselves, gearheads generally like to keep a clean car. Sure, there are always a few that let their ride resemble a landfill but – for the most part – it’s a universal agreement that a car seems to run better when it’s clean.

Hey, you. Yeah, you with the frostbitten ears and far too many pairs of gloves in their hallway closet. A garage heater is definitely something that should be on your wish list. After all, if you have the opportunity to work on your rig out of the weather, it might as well be warm as well, right?

Most mechanics – shadetree and otherwise – will advise you that once a driver can actually see an air pressure deficiency in the tires on one’s car, the amount of atmosphere in those rubber hoops is far below recommended inflation. This is why most modern cars have some sort of tire pressure monitoring system, blaring a klaxon worthy of the Enterprise-D under Romulan attack.

Tacking extra lights onto one’s vehicle is a practice nearly as old as the concept of the automobile itself. After all, you know better than the cadre of engineers who worked for ages designing the thing, right?

Clambering into a cold car before the sun comes up ranks down there with a root canal and talking to an accountant. Alternatively, for those of you residing in a part of the country where conditions do not currently resemble the surface of Hoth, sitting on scalding hot seats or touching a flesh-searing belt buckle in the summer months can also be unpleasant.

We’ve one more Christmas gift idea for the gearhead in your life before we break for the next few days. Not all presents given to car lovers have to be in the shape of a new socket set or some parts to a Mustang GT, though those are surely appreciated.

It’s said that most gearheads never really grow up, it’s just our toys that get bigger. The proliferation of hi-po side-by-side vehicles and the constant barrage of retro-inspired trims (waves at GT350 Heritage Edition) proves this in spades.