No spare wheel in your new car?

MartinHolm

Tyres, the latest scam?. My daughter bought a new Skoda Fabia car under the scrappage scheme and when it was bought, we were surprised by NO spare wheel. A “puncture repair in a can” (RRP £35) was where the spare wheel should be. When I queried the lack of a spare wheel I was told “To be Green, all new cars come like this less weight, better fuel economy, plus lower emissions in manufacture, (20% less for wheels), if you do get a puncture the magic can re-inflates the tyre and you get going again”.
All very reasonable I thought, but what they failed to say, is by using the can you ruin the tyre!
. The chemicals in the can eat the tyre and cannot be flushed out of the rubber. Ergo, the tyre is scrap as it cannot be repaired. NO garage will repair a tyre that has had this fluid introduced to it. So basically an under £10 repair has just cost you a new tyre. In our case this was £81 but how much is a new tyre for your car?
So I will be buying a spare wheel, and throwing the “magic can” in the bin!
Have you got one of these cans in your car? Let me know your views

MartinHolm House paid, Zero debt, some savings, all thanks to offset mortgage introduced in 2000 and living within my means. My house is where I live, not an “investment” to borrow against. Great site Martin Shout the message earn £1 spend 99p.

sdavi3680

He lied about all new cars not having one. I have looked at a new VW Polo and Kia Cee'd, they both had a spare tyre. I'm pretty sure the new Fiesta had one too.

LandyAndy

I bought two new cars last year. The Mazda2 has a 'space saver' but the Mazda6 just has the can (as did our previous RX-8). I hate the can. What happens if you get a blowout and the tyre is scrap? You're stuffed.

Blackpool_Saver

One thing to NEVER scrimp on is tyres, never repair tyres either, get them replaced.

2010

Thanks for pointing this out as it`s the first I`ve heard of it.
After googling "No spare wheel in your new car" it appears that this racket has been going on for at least 18 months.
Some manufacturers are doing it and some aren`t.
Others,like Ford give you a spare wheel as a free option,if you request it.

To me this gimmick is yet again sheer money grabbing and penny pinching by the car makers.
Ford alone have in the past 12 months raised their prices FOUR times,blaming the strength of the euro, and of course the government scappage scheme has given these shysters a golden opportunity to hike prices by at least £2,000,co-incidentally the same amount as you get for your old car.

Well when I buy my next new car if they don`t provide a spare wheel,they can keep the car and I`ll go to someone who does.
Making people aware of this racket will hopefully make them insist on a FREE spare wheel at the time of purchase.

goRt

Got an M3 - they've always had the 'spare in a can' thingy, but the rears are way larger than the fronts, so which would they have supplied.
Space saver - had to use one once, just on the way back from holiday, car boot full of luggage so I put the space saver on and put the standard tyre in the boot - where does the luggage now go!?!?! Space savers - great idea, just not thought through.

lilac_lady

The new Ford Fiesta has an optional spare wheel at a cost of £30....to the customer of course. the other option is - no spare wheel.

redux

MartinHolm wrote: »

. The chemicals in the can eat the tyre and cannot be flushed out of the rubber. Ergo, the tyre is scrap as it cannot be repaired. NO garage will repair a tyre that has had this fluid introduced to it.

That's not the only case they won't repair.

If you've had a puncture and travelled more than a few yards on a flat tyre, the tyre is scrap anyway.

They can tell by the granules inside from where the insides of the tread face and the sidewall have rubbed together.

However, I would be a bit annoyed not to have a spare. In fact on trips abroad I often take two, as I once spent 3 hours visiting several dealers in Kassel Germany to eventually find a new tyre for a Citroen BX, and it cost £30 more than here.

Poodlecrazy

I don't have a spare wheel in my car either which I discovered when I really needed it a few weeks ago.... had a compressor can thingy instead. Not much use given it was totallly flat. My car is a 6 month old Audi TT as well so you'd think with the amount of money they made a wheel wouldn't be too extreme!

Mind you the boot wouldn't be quite as useful if I did fit one of those tyres in, they're huge!!

kalaika

Some manufacturers have been doing this for years. I reckon that by supplying a can instead of a spare tyre, the manufacturers are not thinking about the environment (as the OP says the salesman told him) but are actually doing it to save themselves some cash.

Personally I think that the idea of having one of these cans in place of an actual spare is ridiculous. I would never buy a car unless it had either a full or space saver spare.

tomstickland

Tyres cost me £50 fitted all in. That's cheap enough considering the rareness of a flat.
If you think it's a scam go and buy a spare wheel from the scrap yard.