Boot and Trunk

A few days ago a friend of Joans rang to say that Joan had wished to give her craft and quilting books for a book sale of which the profits would go to cancer research. I didn’t know about Joan’s conversation with Teena, but was sure that she would have wanted Teena to collect them. Teena came around yesterday and we loaded up the boot (trunk) of her car with about 150 books. Later in the day our daughter Helen told me of another bookshelf in a spare room which had an estimated 300 more books. Today I loaded up my car and delivered them to Teena.
Loading the books into my boot/trunk or whatever.
The books on Teena’s loungeroom floor.

Writing this, I thought about the differences between English U.S. and English Au.

I can see why Americans call the ‘boot’ of their car the ‘trunk’, but I can’t see any way to justify calling it a Boot. The Early 20th century cars often had a metal or leather trunk attached to a carrier at the rear of the car.
Here is a low resolution pic of a trunk. In front of the trunk is what we would call the Dickie Seat, but in the U.S. is called a Rumble Seat.

On the other hand Americans call Mudguards, Fenders. Surely a fender should be a bumper bar? Mudguard seems more appropriate, especially in the early days of automobiles before Macadamised roads.