What Your Car Trunk Says About You

"People lie," she says. "I don't believe 80% of the market research because people tell you what you want to hear, what they think about themselves."

Styring won't name her sponsors, but by her questions, it sounds like one sells moist towelettes. And Honda lent her an Odyssey minivan for her travels. As of Tuesday, she had inventoried 15 of the 21 cars in this stop, each taking about two hours.

The hunt sometimes yields marketing pay dirt.

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For instance, Styring seemed intrigued by the box of Altoids mints that Shaffier, 52, an architectural designer, had in his 2001 Malibu's console. She was impressed by Altoids' packaging, its metal box. That packaging, which seems durable and appropriate for a car, worked for purses as well, she found in her earlier work. Women liked Altoids because the rattle of mints in the box made them easier to find than competing breath mints.

In Shaffier's car, Styring also discovered a single piece of yellow Skittles candy rolling around under the front seats, and half a cashew. A wad of napkins was stuffed in the door pocket. A coffee cup graced the console. Conclusion: This guy may eat in his car more often than he said in the pre-search interview.

She wondered whether she might be able to advise fast-food operations not to hand out bunches of napkins with every purchase. It appears motorists are fine with just a couple — and wouldn't have to squirrel away or discard the rest.

As do purses, cars become repositories for mystery items. A curious smile sweeps the researcher's face when she comes across a broken CD of karaoke music in Shaffier's Malibu. Shaffier was just as mystified. "That broken CD, that's mine? I don't know who put that in there," he said.

It looked like the inventory might go quicker when Jeannette Dow, 55, pulled up. She had a 2002 Toyota Tacoma pickup with an empty bed. But Dow, too, had lots of flotsam that had built up over time.

A teacher and marathoner, Dow says a truck she owned a few years ago was so messy she would let the filth build up, then just cover it over with a new layer of carpet. "It was like strata," she says.