With summer slowly receding in the rear-view mirror, along with the holiday season, it’s time to de-clutter your motor and get rid of all the things that you might have fitted it with over the summer, with fuel consumption sure to be the winner.

Before we get to the bits that you might have added, do you know what else is lurking in your car? Truck companies say they are Britain’s rolling warehouses, but do you have any idea what contribution your car might be making to the tonnage of things rolling around our road network? Families tend to treat the inside of a car like a skip. It’s surprising what can be found underneath the front seats. Try shoes, discarded electronic games consoles, books, boxes of tissues, and iPods. My daughter lost her iPod a few years ago after a family holiday down in Dorset. Phone calls were made to the place we had been staying, and the finger of suspicion was pointed in several directions. Two years later, my youngest son discovered it tucked underneath one of the seats in our Ford Galaxy. It even worked, but along with other family detritus, had been adding to the weight the car had been hauling around in the meantime. It’s surprising just how much it all adds up to and you don’t tend to notice until you clear it all out.

I’m a great believer in carrying things to ward off automotive evil spirits. Consequently I never go out in my nearly 50-year old Volvo without a comprehensive tool kit and a few spare parts, but why would I need to do that in a modern car? The likelihood of a breakdown in a modern diesel is pretty unlikely. I covered nearly 1,900 miles on holiday this summer in a new Volvo, a V60 D3, and didn’t even think about taking precautions in the event of a breakdown.

Like many others, I have a roof box for those extended trips, but despite the convenience, I’m not a great fan of the things. That’s partly because no matter how well shaped they are, there is bound to be a fuel consumption penalty, partly for aerodynamic reasons and partly because it adds unnecessary bulk once they have done their job. The same is true of cycle racks, whether fitted to the roof, the back of your car or positioned on the tow bar. These items add weight and disturb airflow over the car when you don’t need them. Removal is usually pretty easy. You just need a willing assistant and some spare time.

There is another potential hazard too. I would not choose to fit a roof top cycle rack. Partly because you have to get the bikes on the rack in the first place, which means that whatever aids you might have used to fit them – ladders etc, will also be needed at the other end to get them off again. We have a friend who had his bikes fitted in an upright position on the roof of his car. It was all going so well until he decided he needed to nip into a supermarket multi-storey car park. He had forgotten about his roof top cargo, until the inevitable happened. The cascading bent bikes, twisted roof bars and dented car roof landed him with a rather large repair bill.

If you have taken the trouble to fit it, remember it’s there, and if you don’t need the item any more, rid yourself of the extra weight, and store it in the garage. Friendlier fuel bills and the fitness of your bank balance depend on it.

John Kendall