Do You Still Self-maintain Your Car?

[dirzsignature]

Hi all,

My name is Yudhi Hartono and I am a fourth year industrial design student from the University of New South Wales. I am currently planning to design a automotive tool cabinet for one of my uni-project. My market would be the young car owners (25-35 y.o) and this cabinet will be used to store automotive-related stuff such as; hand tools, engine oil, car shampoo, etc..

However I need to ask a question to you guys in order to see if this product has a market for it. For those of you in the 25- 35 y.o age bracket, do yo still perform some small regular car maintenance by yourself? or do you simply use your car and only bring it to the a mechanic/dealership when the scheduled maintenance due?
And also, would you spend your money to buy a cabinet that is made out of plastic or you rather get the metal cabinet?

Any replies will be appreciated.

Regards,

Yudhi

[Buzz Box]

24yo and the only time we lift the bonnet is to fill the washer bottle lol

Use to religiously wash the car but stage 4 so bye bye car washing

[819_FLY]

Being a mechanic by trade myself, I normally do things myself, but at this stage the only things I will take the car in for is either, schedule servicing or warranty repairs, apart from that I do everything else myself.

As for the tooling part, im suprised at how many people don't actually have any tools within their homes. Even just a 50 emergency kit from super cheap auto would save you some hassle.

Alot of people prefer to have metal cabinet, purely due to their robustness, somehow there are some products out there that are plastic that are really flimsy and that has affected the way people buy, obvious advantages to plastic is its weight and production cost is less, however metal cabinets have stood the test of time and they certainly are not a bad thing and the quality of them is really good.

Wall mounted items would prob benefit from a plastic cabinet mostly due to weight and the fact it would be out of harms way from being knocked into things and having tools dropped on them. Double doors in my opinion is good, with tooling on the back and on the back of the doors and perhaps a swinging partition in between to increase the amount of tools that can be held.

Hope you get some information that you are after....

[dusty86]

look up snap on boxes, if you can replicate something like that your onto a winner.
Good locking mechanism
strong roller bearing drawers
decent sized wheels
some sort of lining in the draws
hmmm thats all I can think of, once you can put a pederbuilt (spelling) truck on it your on a winner

[BlackLS]

22 and do servicing myself.

[Velociraptor82]

Althrough I don't do much of the work myself (don't have the know how). I do keep alot of my tools/cleaning products in my old school bag in the boot of my car. In fact I prefer it that way cos then if something happens on the road or somewhere I've got everything I need with me.

[RJO89]

19 and do almost all servicing myself