ABOUT THIS PHOTO:
Night-time storage of things on the hood of the car facilitated the process of creating room for sleeping. Here some tote boxes sit on the hood, covered with a blue tarp for protection from the weather. A tree branch secures the tarp. This was not possible with my next car (a mini-van) because of its steeply-slanted hood.

ABOUT SYSTEM 2:
My second system came into being in mid-2005 when I built a carpeted plywood floor in the Subaru. It occupied all of the car’s interior except for the driver’s seat, the center console, and the floor area of the front passenger seat. This required me to remove the front passenger seat and the bench-style back seat, pretty easy to do because of the simple way they were attached to the floor and their light weight.

The new floor eliminated the discomforts, and eased the space problems, of the first system. Now I was able to lie parallel to the car's long axis, lessening the need to move things around for sleeping. This issue became even less bothersome when I discovered I could store things during the night on the hood of my car (a tarp kept them dry).