The spacer on the steering wheel is an aid to find the perfect driving position, and it is a liberation.

The driving position is one of the most important things about a vehicle.

But is it really that important to find the right riding position? The answer we would like to give you is absolutely yes,  even if we may not notice it right away.

The driving position is an instinctive thing: we see a car and we like it. Before buying it, we study it well: city car or SUV, small car or sports car, we start to frame it in our needs. Then we evaluate the costs and benefits: the price in relation to the accessories and the performance it has.

We also look at the brand, the reviews, in the end we pick one and buy it. Whether it’s new or used, not all of us tried it before buying it, and if we did, it was for 10 minutes with a seller who most of the time never shuts up.

We start using it every day and discover its strengths and weaknesses that we hadn’t noticed before. For example: it has a really big trunk, or it has too soft steering, or it has good performance but consumes more than expected. We are satisfied, some more or less, and eventually we learn to live with the defects we discover: we have just bought it, we can’t change it right away! And if we’ve had the car for a long time, it also means that the defects it has don’t weigh on us that much.

But there’s one thing that sooner or later we can’t stand anymore: if it’s uncomfortable to sit behind the wheel, as soon as possible you end up using something else.

This applies both to the writer’s experience and to what our customers tell us:

• Husbands who have a coupe but use their wife’s car because it’s more comfortable, even if it’s a nail.
• People who say “to go on vacation I had to use the other car because it has more trunk, but how uncomfortable it was to drive!”.
• “This car would be perfect, but I have to drive with the seat all the way forward because the steering wheel doesn’t get close, it’s becoming unbearable and I’m thinking of changing cars”

The driving position can be adjusted according to 2 things: the seat and the steering wheel. All the seats go back and forth, some even have height adjustment.

The steering wheel is a bit more sacrificed – it used to be not even adjustable on almost every car. Then height adjustment was introduced, which almost everyone now has. Depth adjustment came later: first on luxury sedans, then also on smaller cars.

It seems that it is an adjustment offered by the parent companies after a much more careful analysis of production costs than other accessories. We say this because even today there are cars on which approaching the steering wheel is necessary in order to be used decently by everyone, but depth adjustment is not offered.

An example above all: the Fiat 500 produced from 2007. Whether it’s Abarth or the 1.2, it’s a car we see every day. Everyone has it: young, old, tall, short, women…  There is no depth adjustment of the steering wheel and if you are tall it is a problem. And many don’t even come to determine that that’s the problem: they get used to it. They think that the 500 is a small car so it is normal that it can be a bit uncomfortable and they resign themselves to using it like this. Not being able to bring the steering wheel closer, they do not have the opportunity to experience how the same car changes with all the settings set to make it comfortable and usable. They notice if they happen to drive another car that the depth adjustment of the steering wheel has it. In that case, going back to the 500 of our example becomes a bad experience and slowly a woodworm that gnaws at us.

We mentioned the 500 because we are Italian and it is the first car that comes to mind, but there are many others that have this problem. Mind you, the 500 is an excellent car: it has a line that has never aged since 2007, the interior is still beautiful today, it is reliable and functional. As are Renaults, Volkswagens, Toyotas and even Porsches for which we make the spacer behind the wheel. But there are details that make the difference, designed by manufacturers more according to their costs than by identifying with users.

We have discovered that being able to experience the correct driving position is not just one of those things we hear in driving school (or at safe/sporty driving courses) and then forget it, but a necessity. Those who try our spacer behind the wheel, experience it at the beginning as a liberation, like removing a pebble from the shoe or trying on more comfortable trousers; then he enjoys it over time. And when he changes cars, if he’s not there, something is missing. We already have a lot of customers that we hear from after 2-3-5 years and they want the steering wheel spacer on the new car they bought. Even if the depth adjustment is present!

Have a look at our catalogue: many cars for which we sell the steering wheel spacer (and you can see it installed in the photos, which are always sent by our customers), already have depth adjustment. And yet they mount it. Because?

• being able to drive comfortably seated in the slightly reclined seat,
• Operate the pedals with your legs extended
• Don’t bang against the dashboard with your knees
• And to have the steering wheel where we instinctively feel like we’re used to holding it:  it’s a great feeling.

This feeling prompted us to make the first spacer on the steering wheel, and everyone who learns of it wants to try one.

The right driving position is comfort, it’s time well spent, it’s enjoying your car. Even an old car, which goes slowly, cheaply, becomes as pleasant as a violin if we feel that it has the right driving position.