Citroen Picasso spare wheel

zico_2

I need to get this off my chest before I write to the Managing Director of Citroen cars.
I have recently purchased my second Picasso, brand new. Only got it beginning of March. Previously I had a Picasso, like them for the space they offer and they are a good price.
In Feb, I was out and about, and had to park in a residential area. Left the car for approx 35mins. On return noticed that spare wheel cage was lowered and spare wheel missing. It was brand new, never had to use it!! I was approx 70 miles from home so was expecting a puncture on the way home to really make my day! Fortunately a local scrap yard had a suitable wheel to replace and it only cost £25. The local citroen dealer wanted £130. The scrappy advised that he is always getting Picasso owners in looking for replacements.
Picked up my new Picasso, and on the salemans desk was a leaflet offering a spare wheel lock for £75. I thought this was dear and really that the manufacturers should be providing something to prevent this happening. Anyway, hubby said "what are the chances of it happening again, I will try and fit a lock to it myself". Well, he had not got around to fitting a lock, and I thought we wouldn't be that unlucky, but again we have found today that the spare from our new Picasso is gone. This time there was no tell tale sign of the theft and we don't know when it happened, but it wasn't the same place as before as I haven't been there since! What gets me most is that I do a fair bit of motoroway driving on my own, and if I had a puncture and found the spare wheel gone, I would be stranded until the rescue services got to me.
Why are these large car manufacturers not able to make something as simple as a spare wheel more secure??
I am now unlikely to buy any car in future with a spare wheel housed in a cage under the car. I would be happy to unload a fully laden car to get to a spare inside the boot!!
Feel better already!

Al_Mac

It was on "watchdog" I think. Took a bit of a pounding, you can get a dealer lock fitted, but they ain't going to do it as a standard fitting on new cars.

Sorry

andy88_2

Some manufacturers have been making cars like this for 20 years at least, so whilst you have been extremely unfortunate, they are unlikely to see the need to add more engineering cost to all cars than the value of a wheel. I'd rather have a car with a flat floor, which means the car is stronger and I don't have one of those spare wheel covering false floors that distort under load.

SnowyOwl_2

I've been driving cars with the spare wheel stored in the same manner as your Picasso for around eight years now. On one occasion the spare wheel fell out as I was driving around! It scared the hell out of me as it made a dreadful racket. The person behind me got a bit of a shock too. Then I had to stop the car in the flow of traffic and run back into the road and get the wheel, then find somewhere to park to put it back with the cage trailing along on the ground. I was really, really annoyed, though admittedly it only happened the once.

However the spare wheel in such an arrangement is a real faff to get to. How often does anybody ever check the pressure of their spare tyre if it is stowed in this way? I would much rather have the spare wheel stored inside the boot cavity where it is easy to access for pumping up purposes, stays clean for when it is required, and is out of opportunist thieves' access.

And as for the on board tools for getting spare wheels off...oh useless!!!!

quoia

zico wrote:

I would be happy to unload a fully laden car to get to a spare inside the boot!!

Whilst it might have posed a minor incovenience on the odd occasion, there was nothing to stop you taking it out of the exterior storage position and putting it in the boot yourself !

I can only think of about 3 or 4 occasions in the last 10 years where having a spare wheel in the boot of my car would have actually posed a serious problem due to lack of space whilst transporting 4 or 5 people and a large amount of luggage.

SnowyOwl_2

Quote from Quoia: "there was nothing to stop you taking it out of the exterior storage position and putting it in the boot yourself !"

Tried that and failed!! I don't know about other cars, but the under car cage for the spare wheel on my car won't stay up unless there is a spare wheel in it...so I'd have to have two spare wheels in order to have one inside the boot.

When I am next changing my car this is a feature I will be using to shorten my list of possible cars...unfortunately my hand was rather forced the last time I changed car as some oik nicked my previous motor and wrecked it, thus leaving me carless otherwise I'd have shopped around a bit more.

Dunkyboy_2

I would add that there are a lot of Vauxhall Zafira owners out there who are happily unaware that there spare wheel is missing. Zafira's suffer the same as the Picasso, it takes about 30 seconds to steal a brand new wheel and tyre, and the manufacturer couldn't give a toss....... :mad: the best thing to do is to demand a lock fitted before buying the car, and if they refuse then buy else where, this always works, but leave it to the last thing, so the salesman has spent half the afternoon trying to sell you a car, only for you to walk away for the sake of a lock.
This is of no use of-course if you've already got the car,which is usually the case :cool:

ksrao

I bought VW touran in sep.2004(7 seat version). Yesterday I found out that this car is not supplied with spare wheel at all.I was not informed about this at the time of purchase to make an informed decision.The dealer just says 'sorry'.I have no recourse and scared to drive.

Gaz_Hammer

:mad:
Hi,
I drive a Citroen Xsara which has the same storage cage underneath and suffered the same problem with someone pinching the spare wheel whilst I was out at work and parked for only 3 minutes in a residential street.

I bought a really good quality bike lock like this one - cost about £20


and I have managed to fit it through part of the main bodywork of the car (difficult to explain but have a look underneath and I am sure you will see what I mean) and then threaded it through one of the wheel holes.

'Touch wood', since I fitted it 2 years ago I have had no problem.
By making life a bit difficult for these b**t**ds they will try elsewhere.

Gaz

cheeko

Hi there, first post so please be kind to me !
On my picasso you have to push the cage up quite hard to get the spare wheel out and there is also a retaining bolt accessed from inside the boot that has to be unscrewed first. Is this not sufficient to keep the wheel secure from thieves then or do you still need some sort of additional lock?

isayoldchap

Dunkyboy wrote:

I would add that there are a lot of Vauxhall Zafira owners out there who are happily unaware that there spare wheel is missing. Zafira's suffer the same as the Picasso, it takes about 30 seconds to steal a brand new wheel and tyre, and the manufacturer couldn't give a toss....... :mad: the best thing to do is to demand a lock fitted before buying the car, and if they refuse then buy else where, this always works, but leave it to the last thing, so the salesman has spent half the afternoon trying to sell you a car, only for you to walk away for the sake of a lock.
This is of no use of-course if you've already got the car,which is usually the case :cool:

I am interested to read that Picasso owners can also have their spares stolen.
Since my purchase back in June 2004 I have read quite a few articles on different websites about the Zafira spares going missing.I have actually had a very good response from Vauxhall H.Q.(incidentally I don't sell cars of have anything to do with Vauxhall).I was informed that if your spare had been stolen (and you could prove it by presenting a police crime ref.number of the actual report),then Vauxhall will pay for a K-LOK and you can have it fitted at your local dealers.Or if it had not been stolen (mine hadn't) then they will do it for half price.I paid about £38.It's a shame the BBC Watchdogprogramme did not fully informed the public on this.Seems silly that Vauxhall were not prepared to send someone to the studio to say this or issue a statement about it.Maybe they have changed their policy on it.It was a little funny that some owners only noticed after the show that their tyre had been stolen.I must add that it maybe difficult to take the lock off on your own.Two tyre fitters at a tyre centre had a right hard time and they used power tools.You see it's put under one of the seats which needs to be held upright for you to work inside the car to get the nut off.Of course if you had LPG then your spare wouldn't be there and this would not apply.You could then strap the spare to the inside of the car.Yeah "then they could break your window"(oh please)