8 last-minute gifts for the car lover in your life

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You know the feeling: the holidays are almost here, but you're still a few gifts short.

Luckily, if one of the people on your list loves cars, you can easily pick up a little something to keep their motor running.

It can be pricey, or it can be a bargain.

But the variety of gifts is considerable. It ranges from the very useful to the very thoughtful. 

Best of all, car lovers are not that tough to please. Any modest gift is bound to out a smile on their faces.

Here are some of my personal favorite last-minute gifts:

A WeatherTech gift card.

Screenshot via YouTube

WeatherTech is to car floormats what the iPhone is to smartphones: the premier offering.

ANY car lover on your list who lives in a place where the weather can turn nasty in winter will appreciate the change to buy a set of WeatherTech's customized floor mats. 

In fact, get ready to have a true car lover shed a tear when they open this gift. I recommend getting a relatively large-denomination card, because WeatherTech products are fairly expensive.

An actual car.

Hollis Johnson

Okay, I'll admit that this one is sort of nuts, but there's a long tradition of ushering a loved one out to the driveway on a holiday evening or morning to show them ... a brand new car!

Extravagant as it might sound, this is a great time of year to be buying or leasing a new vehicle. Best of all, dealers are open for business. If you head over to the lot or showroom, you can make a deal and drive home the same day.

We don't recommend specific deals, but we do monitor the market. Beyond the usual efforts by automakers to clear out end-of-year inventory, some dealers and car companies are offering especially good choices.

For example, small-cars and mid-size sedans have been selling poorly relative to pickups and SUVs. So have sports cars. With inventory having built up to too-high levels for these vehicles, automakers and dealers want to move the metal, so they're offering excellent prices and financing/leasing terms. 

Additionally, due to the backlash from its Dieselgate scandal, Volkswagen has been offering some unbelievable deals to maintain it already weak market share in the US. VW's lineup of cars and SUVs is quite solid, so now is a good time to check it out.

A portable jump-starter/charger.

Screenshot via Amazon.com

The days of carrying jumper cables around in the your car are coming to and end.

A new wave of small jump-starters — compact enough to fit into a glove compartment — has arrived.

They're easy to use and can also be pressed into service to charge smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

They're also relatively inexpensive, at under $100.

You can also give the gift of a much more powerful charger, the type that tow-truck crews carry around. That's a fine option for keeping around the house when a dead battery strikes. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider