What Are The Hooks Inside Your Car Actually For?

As cars have evolved over the last century, they've added a bevy of features to make owners' lives a lot easier. At one point, cars were not mandated by regulations to have window defrosters or hazard lights, but nowadays, people won't even consider a car that doesn't have Apple CarPlay, making things difficult for manufacturers like General Motors and Rivian.

Trunks and cargo areas have evolved as well. They were once simply a place to put some shopping or luggage to go on a trip somewhere, but nowadays, cargo areas, trunks, and truck beds include everything from automatic tailgates to power outlets, and even buttons to lower air suspension to make loading up easier.

One type of item that appears frequently on modern cars is hooks. Hooks can be found in several places around the interior and in the cargo area, and they all serve different purposes. The most common is the hook that sits beside the grab handles in the interior, but that's not the only type of hook you'll encounter on cars nowadays.

Often, cargo areas will also include plastic hooks, similar to those found next to the grab handles. If you carry grocery bags with handles, these hooks are meant to hold them, so you don't have to just dump the grocery bags in the cargo area loosely, and then pray that a pothole or speed bump won't spill your groceries all over the interior. This can be a pain if, say, one of them had a loose lid or torn package.

The other hooks you'll see in most cargo areas in modern cars are the metal hooks that are on the cargo floor. These are not actually hooks, they're known as tethering points, and they're often used to tie down accessories like dividers and cargo nets. Cargo area tethering points are not to be confused with LATCH or ISOFIX, which are the standard metal tethering points for attaching child car seats in North America and Europe, respectively.

One new thing that some automakers have started doing is adding hooks to random places in the cabin, like above the glove box or on the seat backs. The above-the-glove-box variety can be used for grocery bags, yes, but it also makes sense to hang a purse on it. It doesn't matter if you're driving or you're the passenger, you can simply pick up the bag before you get out, and you don't have to stuff it between the seats or leave it on the seat. That covers all the bases for factory car hooks, but of course, if you need more than that, any number of online retailers will have you covered. In any case, your clothes will remain wrinkle-free, and you'll always have somewhere to hang the grocery bag, and your purse as well.