Once upon a time ... the spare wheel
10/25/2012
Future generations won't even remember them, let alone be able to change a wheel on a car. Run-flat tires and repair/compressor kits have made them unnecessary, the spare wheels. Or was it the financial controller's red pencil that killed them off?
They appeared a good 100 years ago when pneumatic tires replaced solid rubber tires.
Soon people were even using two spare wheels, because double stitched is better.
The spare wheels were mounted on the outside or at the rear,,,
... and later in the trunk or engine compartment.
Very resourceful designers even found other solutions and created storage space in the doors ...
... or under the floor of the vehicle for the additional wheel.
But as the wheels got bigger and bigger and more and more expensive, new ideas came up. The emergency wheel was invented. And instead of an additional (and useful) aluminum wheel, a mundane steel rim was used for the spare wheel. Then there was the problem of the different dimensions of the front and rear wheels. Finally, in many places the spare wheel was only available at extra cost and at the expense of trunk space. But it is only when a spare wheel is really needed that you realize the value of this extra weight ... and that's just less common nowadays than it was 50 or 80 years ago, when the roads were even worse and nails on the road surface were not unlikely ...
