Supreme Court Decision on car searching

From my understanding, part of the reason why cops search the vehicle after a traffic arrest is to inventory what's there so the subject can't come back 2 days later claiming there was a million dollar diamond ring in the trunk or something like that that was gone by the time he got to it after the arrest.

Coyote, the excuse isn't phony as applied to impound cases. It's important to keep in mind that the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches. It doesn't require a warrant in all cases. Look at it this way. Imagine you are arrested for an unpaid parking ticket you forgot about and, at the time of the arrest, you have a laptop computer in your car. Would you want the police to leave that in the car as it sits in the impound lot, or take possession of it until such time as you sort out the ticket?If the police department has an established policy of conducting an inventory search of all seized vehicles, any search conducted pursuant to this policy is reasonable, because there's a rational for the search other than looking for incriminating evidence.