Spare wheels are so awkwardly stored in modern cars!

Having been a British classic car enthusiast for many years (particularly fond of Jensen classic cars from the early sixties), I recently purchased a very advanced modern luxury car. My new car is packed with what amounts to amazing technology. But even with such expensive modern cars, I have found a poor design look.

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 cars from the early 1960s), 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 one had to replace a wheel, one did not have to remove all the luggage to get the replacement.

If a wheel needs to be changed these days, most of the time, if it’s going to happen, it will be in pouring rain! Then all the luggage would have to be in the rain, all the time, it is necessary to change the wheel and put the dirty, wet and damaged one back in the trunk!

Worse still, many of the new spare tires are now of a special collapsed type (taking up less space) and the normal tire will not fit in the space provided. So now it will not be possible to put all the luggage and the dirty and wet tire back in the trunk!

I hope automakers will say, if questioned, that such a situation is unlikely to occur, as it is true that there seem to be fewer punctures these days than before. However, I travel a lot in Spain and have discovered that there is a real risk of a tire being deliberately punctured (with a knife) as a method used by thieves trying to rob you. Once your tire has been attacked (often at traffic lights), they follow you and point out your problem, offering to help, while someone else is busy stealing. This has happened to me twice now, thankfully 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 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 opened. The jack was then dropped into this hole and connected to the lift attachment, so that when the handle was turned, the car could be lifted.

I don’t understand why these aspects are no longer incorporated into our modern designs.