Wish my car had a spare wheel...

HAL9000

I paid the extra to have a spare wheel in my Civic. I’ve had maybe three or four instances of trying to patch a tyre using the supplied sealant-in-a-can: in every case it totally failed to work. A spare, on the other hand, should always get me home or to a garage.

Tannin

Rob1742 said:

Amazes me how prepared some people are. Carrying extra equipment for the small chance of impending disaster.

Bad things really do happen. A few years ago I was driving a friend home in her little Volvo when a tyre blew out with no warning at 110km/h on the Western Freeway. 

We were both thankful for my long experience driving off-road; I was able to bring it to a halt safely and calmly by, essentially, pretending I was driving in deep, slippery mud. A very similar feeling at the wheel. (It makes one wonder whether a certain number of hours on a skidpan should be part of gaining a licence - 90% of drivers would have spun it or put it into the safety barrier. Probably a lower percentage than that in the UK where snow is more of a thing and more people (hopefully!) learn the tricks.)

Anyway, having brought it to a halt, I was very thankful that the car came from a civilised country which mandates a safety triangle! I had a hi-vis vest too (she must have kept one in her car as mine was in my own car) and I managed to scratch around and find a couple of other objects in the car to back up the safety triangle. It was on a left-hand curve so the traffic  would have had little warning without the triangle set a long way back from the car (150 metres maybe) and those extra objects every 30 metres or so were very useful in keeping the warning message current for long enough. They did the job but I wished I'd had three or four triangles!

ToneControl

Tannin said:

TTony said:

For years, the only real SUV was the Range Rover.   

Cough cough. 

The Range Rover, for all its virtues, came long, long after the Japanese had mastered the art.
 
Toyota have been building Land Cruisers since 1960 - i.e., a full decade before the first Range Rover, and Nissan started making Patrols in the early 1950s. 

Nobody takes a Range Rover into the outback, you need something tough and reliable: Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, maybe one or two others. Range Rovers are for swanning around in the leafy suburbs dropping the kids down to their ballet lessons.

I was also thinking of the Pajero, started 1981   Mitsubishi Pajero - Wikipedia

Range rovers were released in 1970

ToneControl

TTony said:

topdog91 said:

TTony said:

Can't be anything to do with profit margins ...

Really? More metal, would have thought it would be cheaper to make a hatchback or estate.

Hatchbacks and estates might be a little cheaper to make, but an SUV can be sold for a lot more - the margins are much better.

Where did you get that info, I've searched and can't easily find anything to support or contradict it

ToneControl

Rob1742 said:

Amazes me how prepared some people are. Carrying extra equipment for the small chance of impending disaster.

I recall once the weather forecast being atrocious, snow forecast so with this in mind, just before I set off I searched for my gloves, and I was lucky enough to find one.

On the way back from a 100 mile journey the snow came down on the M1 and my cam belt went.

Not being able to identify the white lines on the motorway for the heavy snow I decided to leave the car and hide behind a post on the M1 until help arrived.

Dressed only in a suit and tie ( I don’t think I owned a coat at the time) I was so pleased I packed that one glove which kept me alive during the four hour wait at the side of the road.

I always carry a warm reflective anorak in a stuff sack in the boot, and 2 hi-viz vests

ToneControl

My car has run flats.
Surely the best option?

My sister, Mom and Dad went into a spin on the motorway and wrote off the car when they had a blowout.
My Mrs had one with the kids in the car, managed to control it

ToneControl

btw I read once that SUVs were popular with parents who didn't want to be seen dead in an MPV.
Cars are all about image for a lot of people

p90fool

Jono111 said:

You should only buy a spare wheel if you have a spare wheel compartment to put it and screw it down. This stops it flying about in an accident. 

Does your car have a guitar amp compartment?

Haych

TTBZ said:

darthed1981 said:
I ended up with the baby-SUV MG ZS EV.. 

My wife decided she wanted an MG ZS (non EV) and there was no convincing her otherwise. As expected it's a steaming piece of shit. Around 30k miles and it's already needed a new gearbox (luckily under warranty) and now the clutch is on its way out by the sounds of things - not covered under the warranty this time. Steering feels clunky and makes an odd noise sometimes now. Head unit screen coating is blistering and needs replacing. Poor fuel economy and feels underpowered for a 1.5. Garages don't seem to want to deal with MG as they're a hassle to get any parts for, have to get everything direct from a main dealer. I also don't feel like it has much more space inside than a decent sized hatchback, wish we'd just got a Golf or something reliable! Sorry, mini rant over hope you have better luck with yours!

Last October I had the misfortune to be given one of these as a hire car to drive from south Wales to Heathrow for work.

It was easily the worst car I've ever driven and, keep in mind I do not ever buy even nearly new cars, that's saying something.

Underpowered, couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, but by far its worst features were the steering and suspension- it felt so light, vague and floaty as to be unsafe.  The steering felt like somebody had loaded a tonne of bricks in the boot, it had absolutely no feel to it at all and even keeping it in a straight line on the motorway was a challenge.

It wasn't just me, either.  My colleague drove the first leg of the journey and he felt exactly the same about it - after we flew back into Heathrow and went to pick up the hire car from Europecar, we flatly refused to take another MG!

As for spares wheels, my current car, a 20 year old BMW, didn't come equipped with one as it was optioned with run-flats from new - another car industry abomination.

ToneControl

Haych said:

TTBZ said:

darthed1981 said:
I ended up with the baby-SUV MG ZS EV.. 

My wife decided she wanted an MG ZS (non EV) and there was no convincing her otherwise. As expected it's a steaming piece of shit. Around 30k miles and it's already needed a new gearbox (luckily under warranty) and now the clutch is on its way out by the sounds of things - not covered under the warranty this time. Steering feels clunky and makes an odd noise sometimes now. Head unit screen coating is blistering and needs replacing. Poor fuel economy and feels underpowered for a 1.5. Garages don't seem to want to deal with MG as they're a hassle to get any parts for, have to get everything direct from a main dealer. I also don't feel like it has much more space inside than a decent sized hatchback, wish we'd just got a Golf or something reliable! Sorry, mini rant over hope you have better luck with yours!

Last October I had the misfortune to be given one of these as a hire car to drive from south Wales to Heathrow for work.

It was easily the worst car I've ever driven and, keep in mind I do not ever buy even nearly new cars, that's saying something.

Underpowered, couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, but by far its worst features were the steering and suspension- it felt so light, vague and floaty as to be unsafe.  The steering felt like somebody had loaded a tonne of bricks in the boot, it had absolutely no feel to it at all and even keeping it in a straight line on the motorway was a challenge.

It wasn't just me, either.  My colleague drove the first leg of the journey and he felt exactly the same about it - after we flew back into Heathrow and went to pick up the hire car from Europecar, we flatly refused to take another MG!

As for spares wheels, my current car, a 20 year old BMW, didn't come equipped with one as it was optioned with run-flats from new - another car industry abomination.

I've been told that the earliest BMW use of run flats was messed up - the tyre sidewalls were too stiff for the normal car suspension, and that after a few years they fixed this by making the suspension more compatible

ewal

Would run flats work if a valve sheared off? Is it the rigidity of the sidewall or something that makes them run flat?

Kittyfrisk

^ Personally I wouldn't have run flats for several reasons (all mentioned in this article) https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/tyres/a-guide-to-run-flat-tyres-do-you-need-them/
Other opinions are valid.

ToneControl

ewal said:

Would run flats work if a valve sheared off? Is it the rigidity of the sidewall or something that makes them run flat?

it's the sidewall, yes. If the valve went, it would be still just a flat tyre but with the strong sidewall, so would still be driveable

ToneControl

Kittyfrisk said:

^ Personally I wouldn't have run flats for several reasons (all mentioned in this article) https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/tyres/a-guide-to-run-flat-tyres-do-you-need-them/
Other opinions are valid.

well the article gives pros and cons

the main pros being safety - no spinning on the motorway after a blow out, being able to continue for 50 miles after a flat to get to a safer place

the cons are mostly ride comfort and cost issues. However, my car is designed to run with them, so no comfort issue, there are fewer options but can still get top-speed rating tyres, optimised wet and winter tyres, so no issues there

So safety vs cost

Supportact

I had no idea this was a thing until quite recently.  My neighbour had the recovery service out looking at his car and I asked him what was up and he said it was a flat tyre. I can't believe that they don't come with a spare. My car's just got one of those little yellow temporary ones, which can at least get you to a garage. 

Kittyfrisk

^ RAC research indicates that just 3% of new cars have a spare 
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/just-3-of-new-cars-sold-with-a-spare-wheel-rac-research-finds/

crosstownvamp

Is it the same across Europe and elsewhere? Do any countries require a proper spare?

Supportact

Kittyfrisk said:

^ RAC research indicates that just 3% of new cars have a spare 
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/just-3-of-new-cars-sold-with-a-spare-wheel-rac-research-finds/

Haha I had no idea but I don't think I've ever had a car less than 10 years old so this will probably start to affect me in about 2034 maybe? 

Kittyfrisk

The survey is from 2023, my current car is a 2015 so this has already been happening for quite a while   

sev112

For past 10 years I’ve used RAC to switch a tyre even if at home.  As a weak late 50s bloke I find it bloody hard to get the wheel off and don’t have a rubber hammer to help with.

was really pleased when we looked at what became our current Citroen cactus to find a spare wheel.  It’s been used 2 or 3 times in 6 years 
even my 2009 Peugeot 1-0-piece of tin can has a spare wheel (albeit for quite a while partially submerged in the guitar amp space)