Simple ideas are often the best, and every now and again something comes along that makes
you think, “why’s no-one thought of that before?”
Well, enter this clever gadget called the “SUV Doorstep”. Let’s take a look!
Hii there, I'm paulfp and thanks for joining me for another Switched on Network video!
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Now, a little while ago I got an email from an Australian company called SUV Doorstep,
asking if I'd like to take a look at this. And as soon as I opened the email it was one
of those, “ooh, that’s a good idea!” moments, so I knew I had to say yes!
So what is it? Let's see if you can guess...
Well, if you ever have to reach high up onto your car’s roof either to put a bike up
there or to use a roof rack or roof box, you’ll probably have struggled, like me, to reach
the far side of your roof. That might not be a huge issue for cars with less tall roofs
like hatchbacks and estates, but if you’ve got a big SUV or a people carrier like this,
it can be a real pain.
Now this device is as simple as it is clever; it's literally just a step! It hooks like
this onto the latch of your door and with it in place it’s really easy to climb up
and reach right over to the far side of your roof. Excellent!
It feels completely sturdy and secure and it's got a non-slip surface as well so you're
not going anywhere on it, and it's really helpful for things like lifting your suitcases
up onto the roof!
There we are - right over to the far end. No problem.
And once you’re done loading you boot, you literally just unhook it from your door latch
there (make sure you don’t forget to unhook it and slam the door closed, of course) and
then you pop it in the velvet pouch and in your glovebox or in the side of the door,
for next time you need to use it.
Another plus - and they seem to have thought of everything, it seems - is that on the end
here you’ve got this little hammer point and that's useful for you’re in an emergency
and you need to smash the windows on your car. So obviously you’ll have this with
you all the time so that could literally be a lifesaver!
It's made from “aircraft grade aluminium”, apparently, and that means it's really strong
as well as being really light and the little rubber stopper on the end here is handy to
stop it scratching your paintwork at the point where it contacts. Although on this one they've
sent me it does fall off quite easily so I might stick that on on mine with some Araldite.
The, er, velvet pouch is also a nice touch you can pop it in here when it's in your glovebox
and that’ll stop it obviously scratching and damaging other things that you’ve got
in there.
Nice little package!
Now I must confess that even though my first impression when I saw this was “wow, that's
a really good idea!” my immediate second thought was, “oooh I'm not quite sure if
I'm happy putting that much weight for the latch on my car!” So I asked them, and the
device itself is rated to 230kg - that’s well over twice my weight, and the latch on
your car that's actually rated for at least 900kg horizontally and 1,100kg vertically
so in answer to my question: yes, it's absolutely fine to put that much weight on the latch
on your car door! The actual SUV doorstep would break long before any damage was actually
done to the latch on your car - you could probably put a whole rugby team on that thing!
Now I just want to show you very quickly of the latches on the back doors of my car because
I thought I’d found a fatal flaw with the SUV doorstep, although it wouldn’t actually
be with the doorstep, it would be with compatibility with cars... and that's that on the back doors
of my car the latches aren’t actually right angles to the ground, they’re at sort of
almost a 45º angle, so whilst I was waiting for this to arrive in the post as they were
sending it to me I was thinking, “it's probably not going to work on the back doors which
is the door I use most often to get up onto my roof!”
Well I can confirm that even though it's at a little bit of a handle it still fits on
absolutely fine watch this!
No problem at all! Fine!
So I’m actually really struggling to say anything negative about this! The only slight
negative, I suppose, which is very minor, is that maybe they could have these glued
on already when they come from the factory ‘cos mine’s fallen off a couple of times
and I’m definitely gonna glue mine on.
If you like what you’ve seen and you’d like to get one for yourself, and maybe a
friend too - they’d make a great stocking filler, I’ll put a link in the video description
These come in various different colours, they sent me the red one, it also comes in yellow
so I’d recommend that you get whichever colour is most different from your car bodywork
so that you can always see it when it's in the door and you’ll never accidentally slam
the door on it forgetting to take it out!
They’re really useful, they’re dead cheap so you might as well by one for each car if
you’ve got more than one car, or you could even buy one and leave it in the door on either
side so whenever you’re on this side of the car and you want to get up on the roof
you can get there really quickly.
Such a simple gadget, I love it! It's so simple, so easy it works really well and it's going
to be really useful I'm sure. Let me know in the comments below if you put stuff up
on your roof and if you struggle and also let me know if you're going to buy one as
well!
Thanks very much to SUV Doorstep for sending me this through, if you’ve liked this video
please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already do subscribe to the Switched on Network
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Feel free to share this video with your friends and family if you think they might benefit
from one of these on their car and if you haven't already feel free to check out some
of the other videos on the channel; they’re on screen now. Thanks very much for watching,
see you next time!