After I graduated high school, I came back to Michigan a few times to visit my childhood friends. One of the times I arrived to find that they needed to fill their tires up with air, but neither of them knew how to do it, so they straight up waited two months for me to come help them. And when they did, they presented me with a tire pressure gauge.

“I think this is what we need,” they said solemnly. “We just don’t know how to read it.”

It was one of the ones that look like a pen, where the pressure causes a little stick to pop out. The only problem was, the numbers had been printed on incorrectly, like the machine had missed and only just managed to print half of one number on each line. It had not occurred to them that, perhaps, the reason they couldn’t read the gauge was because there wasn’t actually anything to read.

That’s an example of a functionally pointless tool, but we live in an era where there has to be a specialized tool for everything. Why do I need one tool to julienne my carrots and another to cube them? Why do I need a specific quesadilla maker if I can just buy a panini press with different burner fittings? Why does a baby need a food processor specifically for making baby food when a regular ol’ processor does the job?

I will admit that, stereotypically, I am more familiar with pointless kitchen gadgets than I am with tools designed for cars (less because I actually cook and more because I like to drink wine and yell at videos where people review dumb kitchen gadets), but I know there has to be a whole world of pointless car tools out there. Tell me all about ‘em.