Where to hide questionably legal goodies in your car

Many countries are relaxing their quarantine restriction. Summer festivals are scrambling to make up for lost time. And so are your dealers! Is it really a summer festival if you didn’t bring something you’re not allowed to have? But wherever there are people having fun, you can be sure that the cops will be there too like flies on shit. Where are the best spots in your car to hide your goodies?

The first thing to understand is there are no secret spots in your car that the cops won’t actually know about. Here are the three things that successfully passing a law enforcement inspection depends on: 

1. A police dog. If they’ve got one, then I’ve got bad news for you. One K9 customs officer told CarVertical that his dog detected a package of hashish sunken in a truck’s diesel fuel tank.
2. The officer’s mood and willingness to search your car. Unfortunately, this may all depend on how you and your entourage look, and whether or not you avoid eye contact.
3. The rarity of your car. If it’s rare enough, could it have strange hidden compartments that the law won’t be aware of?

Where do cops most often look for stuff? They’ve actually compiled a list, which we’ve shortened here:

1. The space under your front seats. Yes, there’s a storage space down there. The more you know!

2. Spare tires. You’ll probably only fiddle with the inside of your spare for larger amounts, but they’ll also check in the boot under your spare as well;

3. The rear-facing pockets on your front seats;

4. Ventilation openings;

5. Under the mats;

6. On and in your sun visors;

7. Looking for panels taped somewhere near your engine;

8. Depending on the model, they might check the storage near your steering wheel, the one in your dashboard, the one between the front seats, or the retractable one between the rear passenger seats.

That doesn’t leave us with many options. Here’s what we’ve got:

1. A sealed package attached to a string and tossed into your fuel tank. Secure it by screwing the string into the thread when you close the cap, leaving a barely perceptible tip showing.
2. The same string method can be applied to your windshield wiper fluid. 
3. The same string method can be applied to the emergency oil reserve that you, a responsible and law-abiding driver, always keep in the trunk.
4. The engine and the cabin are separated by noise- and fire-insulation layer. An access point might be hard to find, but once you do, you can stick something in there. How much depends primarily on how fond you are of noise and/or fire.
5. Some cars’ headlights are easy to remove, and some have strange little pockets that are impossible to see without removing said headlights.
6. Some cars do, in fact, have quite secret storage areas under the glove compartment in the front dashboard. Check if yours does.
   

It ain’t easy. The best answer we can give you for where to hide something maybe not entirely legal is “not in your car.” We can’t tell you where to stick it, because us CarVertical folks are car people, not proctologists. Good luck and enjoy responsibly!