Spare wheels are bulky, dirty things. That’s part of why they’re becoming less and less common in cars, replaced with tire inflation kits and printed notes from the manufacturer to “deal with it.” Usually, the spare is stashed in a car’s trunk, but not always. Today I want to know how you feel about the controversial practice of jamming it in with the engine.
If we’re honest, under the floor of a trunk really isn’t the best place to stash a spare tire. If you get a flat and have a trunk full of luggage, you have to take everything out, possibly stick it on the side of the road, then cram in your filthy, flat, missshapen wheel, which may not fit into the temporary-spare sized well in the trunk, and, oh, it’s all a big, fat mess.
Sure, some forward-thinking yet rear-engined cars like the Renault Dauphine or the Tatra T603 had special trap-door accessible compartments for spare tires, but those are rare.
In a lot of ways, sticking the spare in the engine bay makes a lot of sense. If you’ve got the room, it’s out of the way, it doesn’t eat up any more storage room, it’s not going to get anything dirty, and it’s a good place to rest your tools and margarita glasses while you’re working on the car.
I’m actually quite pro spare-in-the-engine-bay. Hell, one of my cars, my currently and sadly immobile Reliant Scimitar, has a full-size spare right in front of the engine:
But I know many people aren’t down with this. My own father, even. He didn’t know much about cars, but for some reason I remember that he was very against the concept of the spare in with the engine. He’d grimace at the thought, as though maybe it repulsed him, a bit.
Some say the heat from the engine bay damages the tire; others, I think, reject it on aesthetic grounds. What I want to know is what you, my dashing readers, think. Am I wrong to be so pro tire-in-the-engine-bay? Was my dad right, after all? Or is it just a rational, sensible use of available space?
Let’s talk.