When you ride in the car with your friends or family members, where do you keep your gloves? What do you mean you don't wear gloves when you're riding in the car? There's a special spot for them in every car! What are we talking about? The glove compartment, of course!
The glove compartment — sometimes called the glovebox — is a special compartment built into the dashboard on the passenger side of most automobiles. It's usually used to store all sorts of things, from registration papers and manuals to tire pressure gauges and packs of gum…and, yes, even gloves from time to time!
Today, most drivers don't wear gloves when driving. Long ago, though, they were a common driving accessory. In early cars — many of which did not have a hard top — gloves were necessary to keep a driver's hands warm because the fast-moving air could cool them quickly and make them numb.
So where would you keep your gloves when they weren't being used? You probably guessed it already. The glove compartment! Over time, the name stuck, even after wearing gloves while driving became a thing of the past.
Even though drivers today don't need to store gloves, glove compartments still come in handy to store a wide variety of things that are often used in an automobile. What's in the glove compartment of the vehicle you ride in most often?
How handy are glove compartments? Very handy! Some cars today have temperature-controlled glove compartments that allow them to be used as a cooler. Imagine taking a long drive and being able to pack a lunch in your glove compartment! Other vehicles even feature multiple glove compartments in several locations to increase the storage capacity of an automobile. Automotive engineers have come up with all sorts of clever designs for storage inside modern vehicles.
Glove compartments are often called by other names in different parts of the United States and around the world. If you hear people talk about a “jockey box," a “cubby hole" or a “torpedo compartment," they're talking about a glovebox!
