When the on-board tool still had its uses
When you visit a concours, as was the case at the British Classic Car Meeting in St. Moritz last weekend, you often come across car owners proudly displaying their car's tool kit.
And they are rightly proud of their complete set of tools, because a complete and correct repertoire is evidence of originality and attention to detail.
The cars of the fifties and sixties in particular often had a very extensive selection of tools, firstly because cars had become more complex and therefore required a wide variety of wrenches, plug wrenches, wheel crosses, pliers and special tools for interventions, and secondly because it was often these tools that made it possible to reach the destination in the first place when something on the car gave up the ghost.
Since then, the number of tools in the car has steadily shrunk, and today you can even find new cars that do without tools altogether - why not, when there is nothing left for the driver to repair and even the engines are no longer accessible. At the latest since the spare wheel was largely abolished, wheel wrenches are no longer needed and spark plugs last almost the entire life of the car. And what else should you be able to repair yourself on a Tesla or BMW i3?
But the joy and awe is all the greater when you find a truly luxurious tool set in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce or Bentley. But even at BMW, for example, the fold-out tool was as much a part of the car for decades as the kidney grille on the front of the vehicle.
