Having been a huge fan of British classic cars for many years (particularly fond of Jensen classic cars from the early 1960s), I recently purchased a very advanced modern luxury car. My new car is packed with what amounts to amazing technology. But even with modern cars this expensive, I have found a design aspect lacking.
I mean the wheel housing and the spare wheel. On the Jensen CV8 and before that the Jensen 541S (as was the case with many early sixties cars), the spare wheel and tire were stored under the trunk and could be lowered from a point just inside the trunk.
The most obvious advantage of this was that even if the car was full of people and luggage, in case a wheel had to be replaced, it was not necessary to take all the luggage out to get the spare.
If a wheel needs to be changed these days, more often than not, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to be in pouring rain! Then all the luggage would have to be out in the rain, for all the time it takes to change the wheel and put the dirty, wet and damaged one back in the trunk!
Worse yet, many of the new spare tires are now a special collapsed type (they take up less space) and the regular tire won’t fit in the space provided. So now it will not be possible to put all the luggage and the dirty wet tire back in the trunk!
I hope the automakers will say, if questioned, that such a situation is unlikely to happen, as it is true that there seem to be fewer flat tires these days than before. However, I travel a lot in Spain and have discovered that there is a real risk of deliberately puncturing a tire (with a knife) as a method used by thieves with the intention of robbing you. Once their tire has been attacked (often at stoplights), they follow and point out their problem, offering to help, while another is busy stealing it. This has happened to me twice already, luckily without them having managed to steal anything. But on one occasion my car was really full and I realized how impossible it was to get my spare.
With my Jensen 541S it was very easy to lift the car while staying dry inside the car. Right in front of the two front seats, the carpet was simply removed and a sealed cover was opened. The jack was then dropped into this hole and attached to the lifting accessory, so that when one turned the handle, the car could be raised.
I don’t understand why these aspects are no longer incorporated into our modern designs.