Last week on the way to downtown I found my main east/west road was closed. Trying to avoid a two mile drive to and from the next e/w main road I ducked into the residential area nearby. This is a dry agricultural area so there are lots of irrigation ditches and I kept getting blocked by them. Quickly became lost. Finally ended up on the next main road I was trying to avoid driving to but with many side trips on the way. I had wished I had a compass. Can you still put one in the car? There used to be many more places to fasten one around the windshield than nowdays on a modern car.
I got turned around one dark night, and ended up way off my route. Walmart has car compass, several versions, in the auto parts section. Actually, most auto parts stores should have compass. I have a magnetic compass in both vehicles.
Daytime, you can ballpark the direction by where is the sun, and what time is it.
Others have mentioned a GPS, a very good idea. In many cars you can have a compass in the mirror. As a bonus, they are the elecrochromatic mirrors that dime when an a-hole in back of you has his high beams on.
My car came with a built in compass but I did not get GPS option which costs few G. Instead I got a 5" Garmin Nuvi GPS with LMT. Auto parts store or RV store will have compass.
Unless I was going to trade every 2 years I would not get a built in GPS, especially if it was more than $ 200. You can get several for way under that and lifetime map updates. Then if you do trade cars you can take it with you.
Just like the spare. I have a 2007 and 2008 truck and car that the spare has never been on the ground, but don't intend on taking them out. If you need it, you need it even if only once every 20 years. Just like insurance.
There are two styles, makers or rear-view mirror compasses. Either is probably as good as the other, but since I drive a convertible, I like to attach a convex rear view mirror over the existing mirror,so I get a complete panorama of what is behind me (no blind spots) and this will not work with one style of the compass mirrors, because it displays the heading in the mirror area. The other brand displays the heading below the mirror and that works well.
Unfortunately the mirror compass itself didn't work. (I bought this maybe 3 years ago so if they had a bad batch or a bad one, this shouldn't be a problem for you. OTOH, keep your receipt.) First it wouldn't do metric, but who cares about that. In a couple months, it would only turn on one time out of three. Should have exchanged it then. May have to buy another one at this stage, and then exchange the bad one, ending up with two of them. So I may have one for sale at a reduced price.
It helps if you already have an electric rear-view mirror. Mine was self-dimming, so there were 12 volts right at the mirror. Still had to fildde with the connector, but one end of that came with the mirror. I think I just used metal pins I extracted from something that I soldered to the wire and inserted in the original mirror connector. A total of less than an inch long. Nothing visible to those in the car, and because of the tinted top of the windshield, nothing visible from the outside either.
IIIRC all the mirror compasses are calibrated by driving in a circle. Very easy. And clever of whoever thought of it (originally for dash-mounted mirrors))
One or more models will also display the outside temperature, but a) I can tell that before I get in the car, b) by sticking my hand out the window, or c) the Climate Control AC shows that, which is about the only thing about it better than manual AC. Otherwise manual is better.
There might be one more thing (time?) that some models display, that you'll have to decide if you want before you buy.
I havent' seen either brand at autoparts stores, only at JCWhitney.com and Amazon.
If not the mirror, definitely don't get the standard Airguide compass from the 1960's, with the adjustable magnets in the bottom. Too many electrical things in the dash to count on a good field. Way back when, around 1969, I wrote them to ask if a more expensive compass would work better and they said No. That all their compasses were the same and the only difference was the case.
There was also an dash-mounted electronic compass, with 2 adjustable magnets for sale at Radio Shack and elswhere under a different brand name, and I have one and it worked well, but they don't sell them anymore for maybe 10 or 20 years. It has a rotating disk in the front, vertical face of the compass, and the top is slanted in back, to go close to the windshield. If you see one used, I'd buy it.
What you can get instead, and I've only seen this at real truck stops, not even autoparts stores in town, is a dash mounted compass that is adjusted by driving in a circle. Like the mirror-type, you don't have to fiddle with the N/S magnet and then the E/W magnet, etc. etc. I would no longer hesitate to drill a hole in the dash, if I had to, but when I needed a cup holder, I was able to make a bracket that attached to the dash with a piece of sheet metal that folded around the dash, went under a bezel, and was bolted in by one of the radio bolts. It worked great. If found some scrap from brown aluminum siding and bent it to fit. Of course the cup holder was primarily on the face of the dash, and not the top of the dash. So you may be back to drilling. Try not to drill through the radio.
Or you can buy a Chrysler mini-van and some other vehicles.
I have no interest in GPS, but my friend tells me his cell phone app, whose name I can get if you want, is cheaper and better than the GPS he has. The difference is something like, The GPS just says to turn left in 1000 feet, but the cell phone says that and also what the name of the street is that one is turning on to. That's going to be especially valuable when you're in an area you know somewhat, and will know the named street when you get to it. Or if the streets have street signs. He likes it a lot better, and it's part of the phone.
Exactly. Once near Plymouth Rock, all the roads went in S-curves and the fog was thick (so Icouldn't tell where the sun was) and the guy I asked had me follow him to get to a numbered highway. And twice I've come to a road thinking turning left will be south, when it was really north, but that's only 3 or 5 times in 20 years. Plus the two times I left the house for blind dates and didnt' take the address with me. Once I somehow remembered the complicated instructions and the other time I had to go door to door asking, Does Jane Crawford live here? Where does she live? Only took two houses to find her.
Yeah, but you can ask someone where you are. You can't ask him to run along side the car, holding up one corner.
This MDX has DVD based GPS costing over 4G, the thing is DVD is not that reliable in a car and updating is extra. No way I'll pay that kinda money for a GPS. When I went to Korea for a visit, I noticed their GPS is really nice, it even tells where speed trap is, surveillance camera is, direction is much more detailed. I guess 'cos it is a small country.
Wife's Subaru also has the compass mirror but she uses her Nuvi.
I would never get a built in car gps. Son had one in his Mercedes and it needed repair while under warranty. Dealer said it was good that it was still under warranty as it would have otherwise have cost him $3,000 to repair. It was a nice system with Blue Tooth and voice control but you can get the same thing in a Garmin Nuvi for 1/10th the price of the repair. Think I paid about $125 for mine with LMT.
Many cars now have a can of fix-a-flat instead of a spare. Useless when you cut a sidewall like I did last December. It is the first time I put a spare on in over 25 years, but I'd have not gotten home without it.
Not that simple. In most cars today the navigation is a part of a package. If you want the other items in the package you have to pay for the high price of the nav. Updates from the dealer are very expensive.
On my car, the Limited, it was included, but on the lesser models it is part of a $4100 technology package.
The old 'package extra charge'. Seems that they will have a package you have to get to get one or two things you really want. Most of the package deals can be argued down in price as there is often a very high markup in them. In 1972 I ordered a car and it came in with an electronic ignition system that was not included in the origional price of the car. The dealer told me I had to have it with the engine I wanted. He showed me a book of prices. It started off at about $ 50 and he flipped over to 3 or 4 other prices. He finally did show me a price of about $ 10 that it was actually suspose to cost the dealer.
I don't know how it is for some cars, but for the Toyotas ( all I have bought for the last 25 years) it is difficult to get anything special. They come in certain packages and that is about it. The dealer may be able to add a few minor things, but that is about it.
Like others have said, the base model Nuvi GPS will run you about $90. Compasses are great if you're on a dirt bike and don't mind riding through backyards, jumping ditches, and otherwise bee-lining. Get into one of those subdivisions with all the cul-de-sacs and they won't do you any good. Then there are the other little annoyances like rivers, canyons, freeways, and Walmarts in your line of travel.
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