The other day, I had a flat.
No big deal, really, and not unexpected considering the way that all the construction in this town has trucks dispensing roofing nails out the back like they were auditioning for the next Bond movie.
However, there was a problem. Had this been my own car, I would have cranked it up in the air with a rickety old screw jack, popped on a donut spare and nipped over to my local tire store to see if they couldn't patch it. The nail was smack dab in the middle of the tread, so it theoretically shouldn't have been an issue.
But this was a borrowed vehicle, a big Audi with 21-inch wheels and run flat tires. I opened its stylish, well-formed trunk and lifted the rear cargo mat. The car was enormous and bright red and people were looking. No spare tire. Oh damn.
Result: call Audi Roadside Assistance, have the car flat-decked to the dealership, be informed that the sidewall of the tire is already shredded — no forgiveness in this lowprofile rubber — and await replacement of tire. Where's the tire? The word "Ontario" gets mentioned. Oh damn damn damn.
However, the crew at Capilano Audi did the best they could to expedite the fix, the human element bending over backwards to try and make up for the mechanical letdown. A tire was sourced out of Langley, the truck dispatched, and I was back on the road in a mere 24 hours. Two days later I got another flat.
Is this just karmic revenge for all those coil-pack jokes I made about old Audis? Possibly, but I think it's more insidious than that. Manufacturers have decided that the average new consumer won't dirty their hands by changing a tire, and so they are fitting cars with tiny little sealant devices and runflat tires. They pretty much have to, given that today's trends seem to be towards enormous steamroller alloys with just a lick of rubber around the rim.
Well I want the spare tire back. I want a real, proper, full-sized spare so that I can drive down into the U.S. and not be at the mercy of some local tire dealer who will have to get the tire overnighted from Ingolstadt, with price and timing to match.
When I was a kid, the family Rover had the spare tire right up there on the bonnet, reassuring in its heft. If you walked around to the back of the car, there was another spare tire too, just in case.
There was a very good reason for this doubling up on rubber. If you got stranded in the Serengeti, you might be eaten by a rhinoceros or savaged by an angry meerkat — you need to be able to get on your way. Sure, this means lifting the hood (an all-too common occurrence in the life of a Land Rover owner) is like bench pressing a tractor tire, but at least the spare's there. Plus you can put really stinky cheese in it on the way home from the grocery store.
There are two issues at work here: first, the idea that everybody needs enormous alloy wheels, big as you can, and second, that roadside assistance will just handle everything so you don't have to. The latter isn't a horrible idea at first, but it does sort of assume that you're always going to have cellphone coverage (certainly not true) and that you'd rather wait around on the side of the road than perform the fix yourself (probably not true).
The former problem is a little more worrisome, and the reason I would now like to propose the Royal Canadian Sidewall Appreciation Society. I'm sure we could get her Majesty to endorse the idea, even if she's into low-profile dogs.
The charter of the Royal Canadian Sidewall Appreciation society is simple: we, the undersigned, would prefer more cushion under our tuckuses. Tuckii. Whatever.
We do not need to lap the Nürburgring in less than seven minutes, we need to not have our spines fractured by stiff-walled performance tires and gargantuan wheels. Just because we've opted for the model with navigation and a few bells and whistles, we don't want the entirely unnecessary and prone-to-flats alloys in a diameter approximating the Moon's equator.
More than that, we'd like to drive in the real world, where there are ruts and road edges and sudden potholes. The racing teams have pitcrews to help them swap things out, but we'd prefer a little more give in the tire so that we actually make it home. It's not just about comfort, but safety.
And performance too.
Clever electronic dampers and computerized traction control is all well and good, but when the car is equipped with the equivalent of those barefoot running shoes, you skip over the bumps like a stone hurled across a lake. Whap-whap-whap: it's not just uncomfortable, it's slow.
Bring back the 15-inch, the 16-inch, and the 17-inch alloy. Stop hiring designers who sculpt sheet metal so that it looks wimpy with anything less than a 22-inch wagon wheel tucked in each fender. Give up on the idea of run-flats and give us back our proper spare tires.
It's time to raise the profile of, er, raising our profiles. An extra cushion, please — we're Canadian.
