Day-to-day car care can be a pain if you don’t have a garage to store your car in. Sure, you can get a car cover, but that multi-layered piece of cloth won’t protect against larger hailstones or completely protect it from getting wet when it rains like a garage can. However, there is one solution on the market that can protect your car almost as well as a garage can anywhere you go; it’s called a car umbrella.

What is a car umbrella?

A car umbrella is just what it sounds like: It’s an umbrella that goes over the top of your car so that it’s shielded from the elements falling from the sky. Additionally, a car umbrella also provides shade from the sun’s rays, which will keep your interior cooler at all times of the year.

Since it’s portable, can you drive with a car umbrella on?

Technically, you probably could drive around with a car umbrella on, but we would recommend it for safety reasons. Also, the car umbrella or your car could possibly get damaged in the process.

How do you install a car umbrella?

There are a few different companies that we found online that sell car umbrellas and they all look like they install onto the car in the same fashion. First, you’ll need to find out how long your car is and buy the appropriate size of the umbrella so that it covers the whole car. When you get the umbrella, you’ll have to assemble it according to the instructions.

After the umbrella is assembled, you can now install it on the car by first placing the large suction cup on the roof of the car. Some umbrellas are automatic while others are manual, for the automatic ones, you can extend, or deploy, the umbrella with the touch of a button from the provided remote. But for the manual umbrellas, you’ll have to extend the umbrella manually. After that, you will need to attach the various traps and hooks to the door handles, trunk lid, and hood in order to hold the umbrella in place.

What is the best car umbrella you can buy?

We found a number of different car umbrella manufacturers online and all of their products seem to have the same basic function in terms of providing shade for your car. However, some of them may install a little differently than others. One of the most popular car umbrella manufacturers is Lanmodo, which offers an automatic and semi-automatic car tent in various sizes, so you’ll likely find one that fits your car through them.

If not, you can always search online or on Amazon.com for other brands that might better suit the car that you have. Unfortunately, we didn’t find one that works on convertible cars since the main point of contact for the umbrella is the roof.

How much does a car umbrella cost?

You can expect to pay around $369 to $500 depending on the size of your car and whether you want a fully automatic car umbrella or not. It’s a steep price to pay, however, considering it can save you thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to your car given the worst weather conditions, it could pay for itself after a year or two of use.