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My 2012 Mustang came with no spare. Just a can of goop and a pump. If I get a blowout the goop does no good along with the free road service that comes with the car.
I bought a full size tire and wheel and I carry an aluminum jack and the proper wrenches to change tires.
Yes I know blowouts are seldom but you have to consider Murphy's law.
Of course not. Why turn a small problem that can be fixed in five minutes into some big ordeal just save fifty pounds? Even if I didn't live in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't want to spend a bunch of time waiting for roadside assistance to come solve my problems when I could just fix the flat and go on with my day.
No spare was a BIG deal when we were car buying about a month ago. Seems all the car issues I've had in my lifetime have been with tires and the last thing I want to be is stranded because I didn't have a routine flat (something that could not be fixed with goop or simply drive to a tire place) and I didn't have a spare.
We looked at the new BMW 3 Series... No spare, just run flats. Have heard some iffy things about the run flats. Not to mention the cost to replace the run flats. This was a MAJOR negative.
We looked at the Volvo S60 which in the brochure said I could purchase a spare as an option, but when we questioned the sales guy, he said nope and whipped out the fix a flat kit. Are you kidding me? After having the original S60 which had a larger trunk and a spare, Volvo really screwed up on this one.
Wound up buying a Nissan Maxima... full size spare, emergency kit, first aid kit and still room under there to put a few tools.
in 35 years of driving I had maybe 3 flats and they were back before radials. My every day driver bought new in 02 has not had the spare touch the ground and my other every day driver (06) has not either.. Thats why
No I would not.I travel to areas I don't want to wait for hour s to have a tow truck come.I definitely wouldn't buy a car wit run flat tires as they don't last long eve in normal use.About every forum o them have lonf depax threads about repalcing them. The wheels ;tires etc are not vheap t do so.
My car doesn't have a spare (simply won't fit anywhere), and I hate the performance of the run-flats. I'm eager to burn them up so I can go back to regular tires. I haven't had a flat in 10 years, and my commute isn't too far. Between AAA and manufacturer roadside assistance, I'll press my luck before I'd even consider another set of run-flats!
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Spares are good for peace of mind, that's about it. They sound good in theory, but if you get a flat tire at night, and it's raining and cold, or if the shoulder is too narrow to safely change the tire yourself, are you gonna do it? I'd wait for roadside assistance. And what if the wheel is seized onto the hub? Yes that has happened to my cars before when I tried to rotate the tires; I needed a crowbar and rubber mallet to unseize them.
100 lbs of weight reduces a car's fuel economy by 0.5 mpg. A spare, jack, large light, crowbar, and wheel lug weigh about 50 lbs. So this reduces your fuel economy by 0.25 MPG. If you drive 12000 mi per year, this equates to $15-20 in annual fuel costs for all that dead weight (aka peace of mind)
More and more cars are now being sold without any spare tire at all, nor even a space to put one. Among them are the Hyundai Elantra and Chevrolet Cruze. Some don't even have a jack, just a can of fix-a-flat. The doughnut spare was bad enough, and then came the run-flat tires.
When the Toyota Sienna came out with run-flat tires and no spare, I asked my dealer if he would drive that car to Alaska. He just laughed. He said cars nowadays are designed to be driven in the summertime to the hair salon and soccer practice.
The automakers say it is to keep the weight down, to meet fuel economy guidelines, but a spare tire weighs no more than a sack of groceries. If that made a difference, all they would have to do is have EPA test cars driven by jockeys. Mileage ratings are rounded off to the nearest mile, and it would take ten or twenty spares to raise the mileage by one mpg.
yes and then I would go buy a spare tire...
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