I wouldn't worry about that. In my experience, this is not a problem. You exercise a little care when handling metal objects close to your precious car anyway - dings and scratches are totally unnecessary and easily avoided. And those saw tooth aren't exactly razor sharp,


I use a folding metal shovel (NATO trench shovel) for whacking ice. That is a heavy metal object I don't want flying around, and it goes into the spare wheel drum.

I use a plastic collapsible shovel (collapsible aluminium handle, very robust plastic blade) for fluffy snow. This goes under the right front seat. Although pretty robust, this has obvious limitations in hard snow and ice.

These two tools complement each other nicely. Neither of them are perfect - but in between them they will tackle any conditions, and they fit into my car without limiting cargo space. If I highly suspect I will be digging my car out of a snow pile I will bring a proper shovel

The shovel shown in the post above is a very robust all-rounder that will tackle anything. But explicit for the purpose of digging snow there are better alternatives than this allrounder. For loose dry or wet to semi-hard snow (not ice) look for a square alumninium blade about a foot by a foot that has a long handle. The lighter weight and bigger blade means a lot more efficient digging than the smaller and heavier shovel shown above. The snow also slides off the aluminium blade (which it won't on an iron shovel unless it's painted, which it won't be for long if you use it in the summer). The downside is that such aluminium shovels must be used with some care if the snow is rock solid.

Me, I won't bring any of those unless I suspect I really have to...

Also, have a look at this thread: last years car shovel choice thread...