Death of the spare

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We Dutch have a nickname for the space and weightsaving emergency spare wheels that can be found in the majority of cars now: thuiskomertje. The little home comer. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s meant to make you mobile in order to reach house or garage. Once there you can repair your tyre or fit a proper, full-size, spare.

We suspect the one shown here by the lovely lady may well be the very first of them. It was a 1958 development by Firestone and came in the shape of a very narrow and solid tyre on a slim steel rim, supposed to be bolted over the punctured wheel. Clever? Not really when you think of it: you need to jack up the car and unbolt the wheel nuts never the less. We don’t think it will do much good to the road holding characteristics either, still flopping along with that flat tyre.

A little home comer seems more appropriate, but now even these are vanishing. More and more manufacturers replace them with aerosols injecting the puncture with foam to seal it. It saves at least 6kgs in the boot, or so they say. All space that will be used up for the electronically operated and heated mirrors, we reckon…

(Words Jeroen Booij, image courtesy Popular Mechanix)

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