Where the spare should be there is a can of gloop. Still, the chances of a puncture are unlikely …
Five years ago my wife and I bought a car from a dealership in Exeter, after our previous one, with its long history of troubles, broke down there. When the salesman asked what we were looking for, we told him we had just one requirement: we must be able to leave our old car on his forecourt, and never see it again.
We’d never owned a new car before, and it was thrilling: everything in it worked. Then a month later I ran over a nail and got a flat tyre. I opened the boot, and peered into the compartment where the spare ought to have been. There, in the tyre-shaped well, I found only an electric pump and a can of repair gloop.
“Can you believe it?” I said to the man at Kwik Fit. He told me most new cars were the same: they didn’t come with spares.
“That can is just to get you home,” he said.
“Yeah, well, it didn’t,” I said, vowing to buy myself a spare wheel.
Five years later, close to Christmas, we are driving to see my father-in-law when a warning light pings.
“Low tyre pressure,” my wife says. “Left front.” At the next red light I roll down the passenger window, and hear the hissing of air.
“Pull over here,” I say.
I open the boot, but there is still no spare. I don’t even have the can of gloop any more.
We turn around and head for the nearest petrol station, where I buy two cans of gloop. As I crouch by the wheel in the dark while the tyre slowly inflates, sticky foam erupts from the hole where a pointed rock has buried itself deep in the tread.
“I’m definitely buying a spare,” I say, as we crawl home to the rhythm of the pointed rock striking the road with each revolution of the wheel.
The disabled car sits outside our house for a week, until I can book a mobile service. On the appointed evening a man turns up in a van with a miniature garage in the back. I watch the whole operation, fascinated.
“It didn’t come with a spare,” I say, hands in pockets, feeling incompetent.
“Nah,” he says, peeling the old tyre from the rim. “Not nowadays.”
The next day I consult several websites, looking at dozens of compatible wheels, including so-called space-saver wheels.
“I don’t know what that is,” my wife says.
“It’s a mini-wheel, like a doughnut,” I say. “An emergency thing.”
“Sounds good,” she says.
“No,” I say. “I want a spare I can leave on there for four years.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this,” she says. “Just buy one.”
Three days later a small, rectangular package arrives.
“Looks a bit small for a wheel,” my wife says.
“It’s a tyre repair kit,” I say. “After I put the spare on I can fix the damaged tyre, then that becomes the spare.”
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“You don’t have a spare,” she says.
“One thing at a time,” I say.
A week later my wife rings me at 10.30am. “I’m at the supermarket with a flat tyre,” she says.
“You’re joking,” I say.
“It was fine on the way, but when I came out, completely flat,” she says.
“This is ridiculous,” I say. “I just got a text saying my new wheel is being delivered at five.”
“So I’m supposed to sit here until five?” she says.
“No, I’m coming.”
On the tube I formulate a heroic rescue strategy: jack up car, remove damaged wheel, open new repair kit, read all instructions carefully, fix tyre, replace wheel, re-inflate. This plan is thwarted as soon as I open the boot.
“Oh,” I say.
“What?” my wife says.
“I guess if you don’t include a spare, there is little need to supply a jack.” Fishing around under the back seat, I eventually find that extra can of gloop.
Two mornings later I roll my brand new wheel down the front steps, with my brand new jack under my arm. At last, I think, I’m prepared for all present and future eventualities.
I loosen the wheel nuts and raise the car until the flat tyre clears the ground. Then I remove all the nuts and pull. Nothing happens. I kick the tyre and pull again. Nothing happens.
I repeat this process for half an hour, until my hands are black. Still the wheel clings to the hub.
I tell myself it’s OK to cry, but instead I leave the car jacked up and go to read what the men of the internet have to say about this sort of thing.
