Yesterday (Sunday) I travelled to a large car show via my '07 GT500 with a small caravan of fellow car guys. Beautiful day, tons of cars. My group parted without me, as I decided to stop and visit a relative since I was in the neighborhood. I hung out there for a while and, weary from several hours of sun, decided to make my trip home.

About ten miles out, at highway speed, the passenger rear let go. No warning. Like a shotgun blast in the back seat. Rubber flying everywhere in the rearview, billowing rubber smoke, as I fishtailed to a crawl. I limped onto a nearby road approach, knowing full well the situation, thinking “great, I have no make the beast with two backsing spare.”

That's right - when I bought the car two years ago I was astonished to learn that there is no spare, just a fix-a-flat kit and inflator. Can you say worthless? The highway patrolman that stopped to check on me said it's pretty common these days....

Anyway, I called one of the guys I was with earlier and explained the situation. Another one of the guys had the original set off his ’03 Roush stacked up in the garage so into the truck one went, along with a jack and the rescue began. They got out to me a while later, and of course the Roush wheel and tire was quite a bit shorter than the OEM setup. We were concerned about the rear diff, so decided to play it safe and off they went for another for the other side of the axle. Another hour or so later and I was back on the road with stylish little chrome Roush wheels and rock-hard gatorbacks.

Luckily the only damage is a little burned off undercoating in the wheelwell, and the shock cover is trashed. I on the other hand am sunburned as hell, with several hours of my life squandered because I didn’t have a damned spare tire. It will be getting one soon.



If you have a late-model vehicle, you might want to check your trunk....

Looks like you saved the rim so that's good. I checked my 620 and no spare, those cheap Italians.

Haven't had a spare tire in 10 years. Lost the one in my jeep. None of my work trailers have had one. My truck has one, but the bumper is bent in such a way that you can't lower it. No dice on the bike spare. No jack in any of my vehicles either. Don't make the beast with two backsing need 'em if you don't have a spare, right?


<--- guess who's gonna get a flat tire tomorrow...

And I suppose there is no place to store a spare either.  And folk used to complain about space saver spares. 

The invention of runflats has kunda pushed this trend but when oem isn't runflats no spare is dangerous and stupid by the manufacturer

Quote from: howie on June 26, 2012, 04:31:58 AM
And folk used to complain about space saver spares. 

This folk still does complain about space saver (cost saver more like  ) spares.  The dumb thing about the space saver spare in the boot of my car (yes I'm foreign, its a boot) is that the wheel well it lives in is deep enough for a real wheel, the "saved" space is filled with a crappy piece of styrofoam as an excuse to fill the void whilst posing as a holder for the jack  . 

Cheap arseholes  .

No spare is even cheaper/dumber 

Weight.

Less weight for the car to carry = higher MPG rating.

DOn't believe me?  Stop eating McDonald's and lose 20 lbs.  Your MPG will go up by about 1%

Quote from: Timmy Tucker on June 25, 2012, 08:22:32 PM
<--- guess who's gonna get a flat tire tomorrow...

IZ?

Quote from: Little Monkey Toes on June 26, 2012, 06:17:55 AM
IZ?

I noticed this while car shopping recently. Luckily, VW (look at me, the fanboy! hahaha) has bucked the trend, and both of our cars '07, and '12 have spares...and not just spares...full sized spares 

standard.

my bro-in-law bought a BMW recently that just had runflats...he promptly changed them to normal tires, and bought a spare to take up all his trunk space 

I hate runflats way to hard and no input. 

That's what I've heard about the Priapus brand of tires.

Ya our Volvo can with some I could not get them off fast enough.

Quote from: ducatiz on June 26, 2012, 06:13:11 AM
Weight.

Less weight for the car to carry = higher MPG rating.

DOn't believe me?  Stop eating McDonald's and lose 20 lbs.  Your MPG will go up by about 1%

Exactly.

Cost as well.

Yep, cost and weight are the reasons from what I've gathered.

Bullshit. 

There's a spare tire well in the car, occupied by the inflator kit....

That sucks.  

I've never heard of a new car not at least having a little donut spare. Both of ours have spares ('08 Infiniti G35xS and '12 Frontier Pro-4X). Not sure I'd buy a new car that didn't have a spare...but I'm weird like that.