Jimny interior storage

Being small there’s a need to be creative with your interior storage in the Jimny. Here I cover a few options; I do plan on building a false floor that incorporates storage instead of the rear seats I always keep folded down but I’ll have that as a separate article when I do that

Sections

Dashboard organisation

There’s a lot of options available for you for dashboard organisation, but the best option I think is the factory dash protector and then pouches that velcro onto it. I wouldn’t put up trays here with loose stuff in them for the most part, but it can be useful to have options if you’re parked up somewhere and that’s useful for you.

I quite often use one or two Maxpedition organisers esp. in front of the driver. These are great for things like access passes for work, pens and notepads and other small things.

I usually don’t have two up there, quite often one of these lives in my bag for work. I generally roam around with a waterproof notepad, a pen and a whiteboard marker in one on the dash though. The whiteboard marker seems silly but sometimes if you’re doing a 4wd track and keeping track of things you can jot notes on the windscreen or the side window. Sounds stupid till you try it.

One of the local members here made me up a really neat dash organiser that’s exactly sized to fit on top of the radio aperture. This is great for holding a satellite tracker, my bluetooth GPS for mapping purposes and the like.

Made up for me by a commercial sewing person; if she ends up making a production run I’ll try to link to her here.

Another option if you want something that stores away more easily is the Maxpedition tactical soft tray. You can put some velcro on the back of it and it’s quite nicely sized for the area above the radio aperture too. The advantage of this tray is the way you can undo the press-studs and fold it flat, tucking it into a seat pocket if you have seat covers or something like that.

Additional cupholders

One of the biggest complaints is the lack of cupholders in the Jimny. I’ve seen some people use cupholders off the dash mount holes but be aware the one on the driver’s side is just into a piece of plastic that clips in so probably not ideal for drinks.

My favoured solution, since I run ram mounts in the dashboard bolt holes, is the ram mount stabilised cupholder. Yeah it’s a bigger option and I don’t use it all of the time, but I find most of the time the two factory cupholders are enough for me.

An option I used but went away from is a cupholder that velcros to the carpet around the transfer lever. It works ok but the cupholder is quite shallow so it won’t hold heavy drinks. A lot of members on the various Jimny groups also complain about challenges with keeping the car in low range with these installed: they are sized just right they put enough pressure on the transfer lever boot to stop it 100% going into low range. If you’re popping out of low range and you have one of these then that’s the first place I’d look.

If you’re interested though they look like this installed. One for an auto has a little less space in it due to the difference in the centre part around the shifter.

They’re also readily available from lots of Jimny stores and also aliexpress and ebay so if you are interested just grab one from there. I sold mine recently as I wasn’t finding I was using it a lot and figured someone else might get more use out of it.

Other storage for the front seats

One thing I find annoying on road trips is storage for stuff like snacks etc. Some people put in arm rests with storage that sit in the cupholders but when you’re already low on cupholders it doesn’t make a heap of sense.

Instead, what I do is use a couple of Maxpedition fold-up dump pouches slung around the headrest legs to make holders for storage that neatly fold up when not in use, but have heaps of room if you do need them.

This could also be a good idea if you want somewhere to have a rubbish bag when you travel. I’d recommend obviously putting a little bin liner in it, but it would work for internal rubbish storage!

One day I’ll get around to getting some molle compatible elastic strapping sewn onto the headrest canvas, which would then mean you could mount it directly to the headrest cover instead of strapping it around the arms of the headrest. It’s fine where it is, but if it went onto the headrest or the seat back itself you’d be able to have the headrest fully down and still have them installed.

Visor storage

This one is pretty simple. I bought some Tasmanian Tiger brand sun shade/sun visor covers which give me some storage options up using the visors. Other generic ones might work, but I can vouch for these and the quality is worth the money.

The visor covers mount very easily, basically just wrapping around and velcroing onto the sunvisors. They are perfectly sized for the car, being the right with across to match the pivot and the clip point into the ceiling for the visor width, and are the same depth as the visors so they wrap around perfectly.

Installing them is super easy, just fold down the visor you want to put them on.

It is a bit easier to get them on if you unclip the visor from the central pivot point, then wrap the visor around with the chosen side you want down to be on the ‘front’ of the visor at this point, and the bit you want to be visible when you fold the visor down to be facing you here.

Then just put the lower side of the velcro down and the upper side attaches to it. Make it nice and snug – though these fit the visors so perfectly this is pretty easily done for alignment – and you’re good to go.

Clip it back in and there you go.

One side, once installed on the visor, has some elastic strapping, a pen holder and also a clear area that you could put important documents… or a mirror to replace the mirror you just covered up with the visor cover.

The other side has some molle webbing, which can be used for molle pouches. I intend to put a couple of little closeable pouches here for additional storage I can access when driving: perfect for mints or similar for long distance trips!

or just as simple as putting an arm of some sun glasses through there to hold them better than just hanging your sunglasses off the visor directly.

Storage off the transmission tunnel

Another crafty option for a little extra storage is using the transmission tunnel. Because the carpet is quite like the soft side of velcro anything you can get with a velcro back can work.

I needed somewhere to store a small bottle of hand sanitiser without taking up one of the cupholders, so I used a small universal holster that came with one of my maxpedition pouches (the chubhttps://www.maxpedition.com.au/collections/pouches/products/chubby-pocket-organizerby organiser I use for part of the toolkit). I can’t find it for sale individually but it looks like the universal pistol wrap would work.

This holder just wraps around and has a velcro back, and it’s adjustable for size. I made it just a bit tight on the bottle which holds the bottle in place but still means I can pull it out, use it and then put it back. It tucks into place pretty nicely.

You could do the same with a velcro backed case or anything to store little things down here.

Roof shelf

For this I used the TLR roof shelf, which is designed to work with the curtain airbags and not obstruct their deployment. Really easy to install, which I’ve detailed in my installation writeup.

This tray is perfect for lightweight stuff like awning walls and poles, or my tent and even stuff like the lightweight camp chairs I use. I appreciate the attention to detail they’ve put into it including the fact it sits low enough from the roof to be useful for storage, but it isn’t so low it obstructs your view from the rear view mirror.

Rear molle panel

This deserves its own little writeup, which I’ve done here about how I installed it. There’s a huge range of molle compatible pouches out there from cheap to hideously expensive and your exact choices will depend on what you want to store there.

Presently, I have a bottle holder with some small pouches to hold spices etc, a pouch that I can access small magnetic camp lights from plus a handheld torch, a dump pouch used to hold stuff for going to the toilet like toilet paper and a small trowel, a pouch for safety equipment like high vis vests and glasses when I visit sites, another dump pouch with a snake bandaging kit, and a first aid kit.

This is liable to change with time and I’ll try to keep it updated with some of the changes, and also some key suggestions.

One downside for some people about this rear door panel is that it doesn’t allow for a rear table. I’m fine with that, but there are other suppliers with rear tables that have cutouts for molle packs so you can potentially store your cake and have somewhere to eat it, too.