Saturday, September 3, 2016

Does your new car have a spare tire?

Does this strike you as being a silly question?  Had someone asked me a month ago, I would have answered of course-although it's probably a 'donut' but that's OK.  It'll  get you to where the flat can be fixed. Or so I thought until my wife had a blowout one Saturday evening not far from home.  When a passing Good Samaritan stopped to get the spare out all he found was a small compressor pump.  The idea was to hook the pump up to the power outlet in the car, turn it on and hope that the sealant contained inside would seal the leak in the tire and inflate it.  It didn't.  The hole was too big.  We had to have it towed putting the car out of service until Monday afternoon.  A major pain.

I called Acura about this and they gave me a bunch of bull about their research showing people rarely change their tires anyway so why not make the car lighter by not including one.  Theoretically, by making the car a few pounds lighter the gas mileage would improve enough for the owner to see a savings.  That of course is ridiculous.  The reason they do it is to save money which I'm sure is not passed on to the consumer. 

Added to this outrage is the fact that the pump included with the car is a one-time use pump.  The Acura dealer told me to toss it.  So now I don't have a spare OR a pump.  After complaining bitterly, they agreed to give me a new pump.  I bought a spare tire kit anyway which they sold to me at cost (yeah, sure) but installed at no charge because I'm a very good customer (this is our 4th Acura all purchased from the same dealer).

I went to the internet and discovered this is a very common practice affecting cars from Chevys to BMWs. In fact just this morning my son got a flat tire on his BMW but at least his car had run-flat tires which are good for about 50 miles.  Just enough to get to a service station.

This is an unacceptable situation to me.  We plan to keep our current car for a very long time but when it does come time to lease or buy a new one, I'll make darn sure it has a spare.

No comments: