“I don’t think I have ever driven a car that steered so precisely. “The trip down was uneventful, as the BMW behaved beautifully: brilliant performance, heaps of power, frugal appetite a pleasure to drive. The cost will make your head spin – budget at least a grand for the exercise,Ī bloke we know was driving his brand-new BMW SUV on the Hume Highway – not exaclty a bush back road – and told his sad tale to us: How dangerously stupid an idea is that? If the run-flat gives up because you need to drive 400km to the nearest service place – a not unreasonable distance anywhere in rural Australia – you’re stuffed.Įven if you get there, what will you do for a replacement? You’ll have at least a three-day wait while the vehicle maker finds and air-freights a new wheel and tyre to you. In the event of a puncture the vehicle can be driven a limited distance at reduced speed, to a service outlet, where the tyre may be repairable, in theory, but in practice never is. To save the boot space taken up by a spare tyre the vehicle maker fits road tyres that have an inner supporting structure. Īfter this experience we resolved never to test or recommend a vehicle with a temporary spare, which is one reason why you won’t see many brands of SUVs evaluated on this website. Imagine if this happened in the Outback – hundreds of kilometres of gravel road away from tyre service. We reached the bitumen and crept back to Sydney, averaging around 60km/h and risking a rear-end shunt all the way.Īt the end of this 130km drive the temporary spare was totally stuffed – and so were we. We couldn’t go any quicker than around 10km/h or our teeth started to chatter. The temporary spare felt like it was made of solid rubber and the Cayenne’s traction control worked overtime on the loose gravel tracks as we tip-toed towards the bitumen. Oh well, nothing else for it: we fitted the temporary spare to the Porsche and aimed out of the forest. Residing under the spare-wheel-well lid was a skinny temporary spare wheel and a tyre that looked like it would suit a lightweight motorcycle. We’d have had to stay in town overnight and accompany a tilt-tray out to the stranded Porsche next day.Īs it turned out, we had a VW Touareg with us and that vehicle shared its platform and wheel ends with the Porsche, so we confidently lifted the tailgate, in pursuit of its spare wheel. Without backup vehicles we’d have been in a right pickle – no mobile phone coverage, nightfall imminent and about two hours’ walk into Lithgow. Given that the tear in the tyre was big enough to fit your hand into, it was absolutely certain the leak sealant wasn’t going to work. Instead of a spare wheel there was a pressurised can of leak sealant that we were supposed to inject into the flat tyre, to seal the hole and re-inflate it. We lifted the tailgate and the spare-wheel-well lid and to our horror we were greeted, not by a shiny spare wheel and tyre, but by a Bose woofer, neatly shaped to fit the well space! We were testing a Porsche Cayenne 4WD on graded forest tracks just out of Lithgow, NSW, when one of its expensive tyres went ‘pop’. No problem, we thought, we’ll just fit the spare and head back to Sydney, where it can be repaired. Run-flat tyres and emergency spare tyres have no place in the Australian market, especially for people who want use their 4WDs for trips more than 100km away from service back-up.
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