Top 10 Car Accessories to Enhance Driving Experience

Some good car accessories can help to make day-to-day driving a little easier. You might need some help with navigation, or you’d rather add a level of personalisation to your car. Whatever the reason, car accessories can solve a wide variety of problems.

While we may not stock car accessories, our cars provide a great place to test them out, so explore our website today to see just what new and used vehicles are on offer. However, in this article, let’s look at the top 10 car accessories to enhance your driving experience.

Phone Holder

If you’ve not got an in-car satellite navigation system, then your phone is the next best thing. However, to be on the right side of the law, your smartphone needs to be in a sturdy cradle, mounted in an area that isn’t going to block your line of sight out of the vehicle. It’s a handy car part which serves a very functional purpose.

Once it’s there, you’ve got a clearer view of the navigation system you might be using through your phone. Coupled with audible alerts, you’ve got a good alternative to an in-car sat-nav.

Satellite Navigation System

If you don’t want to use your smartphone for navigation, then there are plenty of systems that can do the job instead. Satellite navigation technology continues to progress and in recent years the units themselves have become smaller and smarter. As the technology has become more commonplace, so the price has come down for a sat-nav, meaning it’s not expensive to have this tech in your car. You’ll be able to find a variety of dashcams available online if you want to shop for car accessories that way, too.

Available from a variety of suppliers, the latest sat-nav systems can even show you traffic on your route, speed cameras up ahead and even over-the-air technology that ensures your maps are kept up-to-date at all times.

Bluetooth Transmitter

Nearly everyone has a smartphone today, but not all cars come with a way of playing the media stored in your phone via a car’s speakers. That’s where a Bluetooth transmitter comes in. It’s a nifty bit of tech which plugs into a car’s 12-volt socket and allows you to transmit whatever your phone is playing through the car’s system.

Simply pair your smartphone with the transmitter and then tune your car’s radio to the frequency displayed on the gizmo itself. You’ll then be able to hear whatever your phone is playing—be that music, podcasts or radio—in crystal-clear quality. Simple!

Heated Car Seat Covers

There’s nothing like the cosy feeling of a heated seat, but it’s a feature that not all cars come with. If you’re fancying the heated-seat experience, then there’s an easy way to get it—with a plug-in heated cover.

All you need to do is plug the heated seat cover into the car’s 12-volt socket, click a switch and - voila - you’ve got a toasty seat behind you in an instant. A lot of heated seat covers come with extra cushioning, too, making those longer journeys even more comfortable.

USB Charging Adapter

Nearly all cars come with a form of 12-volt socket, but not all have USB connections. More widely used by the latest chargeable technology, USB charging points are invaluable in a car for topping up devices and keeping the whole family happy when you’re on the move.

Thankfully, USB adapters are an inexpensive way of transforming your existing 12-volt sockets into modern connections. Simply plug them in and you’re away. Most adapters have multiple sockets on each connector, too, providing a greater number of charge points in the process.

LED Lighting

A lot of the very latest cars have some cool-looking LED lighting applied to areas such as the upper dashboard and footwells. While most cars do come with some form of lighting, not all get this more modern LED setup, but it’s something that can easily be replicated with some inexpensive car parts.

An LED lighting kit allows you to place lights wherever you’d like inside a car and many systems allow you to customise which colour you’d like, too. Some run off batteries while others use the car’s electric supply. If it’s the latter, make sure they’re switched off each time you leave the car - you don’t want to come back to a flat battery after all.

Dashcam

The dashcam has seen a huge rise in popularity over recent years as drivers lean on them for added peace of mind when out and about. A crucial way in combating cash-for-crash schemes, dashcams have also become a way of providing evidence of who was at fault in an incident.

Dashcams have tumbled in price over recent years and you can pick up some models for a relatively low outlay. Some of the latest features can automatically start recording when they detect an impact, while others can start rolling if they sense an intruder is lurking around the edge of a parked car.

We’ve picked out some of the best car parts in this feature, but there’s something you need for all of them - a car. Our showrooms at Eden have some of the very best new and used vehicles available today, so head on over to our website, where you’ll be able to browse newly added cars, organise test drives, or speak to a member of our team.