New car road tests are saying that a number of vehicles now come equipped with run flat tires and no spare wheel.

There's several problems with this approach to saving money, especially since these seem to be mostly high end cars
such as BMWs.

Run flat tires don't last very long. Our experience is that 10,000 miles or 16,000 Km is about all you can expect to get.

Run flats are also rough riding and energy inefficient in that their rolling resistance is higher than the norm.

So here you are with a brand new car, having to buy new tires about once every year, based on most owners' average
driving habits.

Then comes the problem of what to do in winter.

Run flat ice or snow tires, if available, come in very limited choices. If you opt for regular tires and you hit a curb, or a pothole,
or are just plain unlucky and pick up a nail, you have no spare tire to use.

Now granted, a lot of people can call the CAA and get towed in, but if you're way off in the country somewhere, towing may not
be an option and in our neck of the woods, a tow truck driver cannot even leave his vehicle until the police have shown up with
a flashing arrow car.

Towing vehicles off limited access highways is about to become very expensive indeed.

I don't know if the spare tire cavity is still being built into these cars that no longer have spare tires, but if they are, my first reaction
would be to buy a steel wheel and a cheap new tire to carry as a spare, or see if I could find a used "doughnut" tire and rim in a
scrap yard.

Run flat tires should be offered as an option, perhaps, but these fast wearing rubber doughnuts (I hate to call them real tires) being
supplied as standard equipment is a very, very bad idea.

In fact, I might be inclined to walk away and find a car from another manufacturer who hasn't tried to foist me off with this penny
pinching little scheme.

And since this is tire changeover season, if you have run flat tires, or even other tires equipped with pressure sensors, make
SURE you tell your garage that, because the pressure sensors inside the tires can be damaged by a tire changing machine
and the cost of replacement sensors is exorbitant.