I bought the APIO Cargo Flat Deck about four years ago but only now is it permanently installed in the JDMny. And it’s not even where it should be…

Back in 2014 the JDMny took on the responsibility of ferrying our new Lakeland Terrier around and I purchased the Cargo Flat Deck to bring the boot floor up to match the folded rear seats, giving me a nice platform for a comically-oversized dog crate and a bit of extra storage underneath.

Unfortunately this setup proved less than ideal – not least because the way the crate was secured made getting anything out from under the deck a real pain – and in the end I removed both the rear seats and the deck to allow the crate to be bolted directly into the boot floor via a homemade adapter. Eventually even the adapter got ditched in favour of strapping the crate down via the OEM boot floor tie down points found on JDM Jimnys.

All this trial and error resulted in a great final location for the crate but also freed up some storage space between it and the front seats. Staring at this space I had an “I wonder if…” moment and dug the APIO deck out of storage to check the size. It fitted perfectly and I was even able to bolt the hinges up to the original dog crate adaptor, creating a folding “continuation” of the boot floor behind the front seats. To support the platform in its horizontal position I looped a couple of Kriega Cam Straps through the deck and up to the other cargo tie down points that JDM Jimnys receive, which works really well. In the footwells there’s tons of room for my recovery gear and I’d say the space created on top easily replicates the standard boot space of a Jimny.