Having been a keen British classic car enthusiast for many years (particularly fond of the Jensen classic cars of the early sixties) I only recently purchased a very advanced luxurious modern car. My new car is packed with what amounts to amazing technology. But even with such expensive modern cars I have found one poor design aspect.I am referring to the housing of the spare tyre and wheel.

In the Jensen CV8 and before that, the Jensen 541S (as was the case with many cars of the early sixties) the spare wheel and tyre were stored under the boot and could be lowered from a point just inside the boot.The most obvious advantage of this was, that even if the car was full of people and luggage, in the event of having to replace a wheel, one did not have to take the entire luggage out to get at the spare.If a wheel needed to be changed these days, more often than not, if it is going to happen, it will be in pouring rain! Then the entire luggage would have to be out in the rain, for all the time, it takes to change the wheel and to get the dirty, wet, damaged one back in the boot!.Worst still, many of the new spare tyres now are of a special collapsed type (taking up less space) and the normal tyre will not fit in the space provided. So now the entire luggage and the dirty, wet, tyre will not be possible to fit back in to the boot!.I expect the car manufacturers would claim, if challenged, that such a situation is unlikely to happen as it is true that there seem to be less punctures these days than before.

However, I travel a lot in Spain and have found that there is a real risk of having a tyre deliberately punctured (with a knife) as a method employed by thieves intending to steal from you. Once your tyre has been attacked (often at traffic lights) they then follow you and point out your problem, offering to help, whilst another is busy robbing you. This has happened to me twice now, luckily without them succeeding in stealing anything.

But on the one occasion my car was really packed full and I realised just how impossible it was to get at my spare.With my Jensen 541S it was an easy matter to jack the car up whilst keeping dry inside the car. Just in front of the two front seats the carpet was simply pulled away and a sealed cover opened. The Jack was then dropped down this hole and connected to the jacking up fitting, so that as one turned the handle the car could be lifted up.I do not understand why these aspects are no longer incorporated in our modern designs.

By: John Cohen