Can you Spare a Tire?
By Joel D. Joseph, attorney.
I recently rented a Kia Forte recently from Avis. I parked the Kia at a store in Los Angeles and after I finished shopping I noticed that I had a flat tire. I immediately called Triple A. While waiting for the emergency roadside service truck, I opened the trunk to get the spare tire ready for AAA to install.
To my amazement, I was shocked to discover that the space for a spare tire in the trunk was empty. The service truck driver said that many new cars come without spare tires. Kia provided a repair kit but the tire had a gash not a puncture. The AAA truck drove off and the technician said that could not do anything, that I needed to buy a tire or call Avis.
After a thirty-minute hold on the phone call to Avis, I needed to take action to get to an appointment across town. Luckily, I found a replacement tire nearby. I was fortunate that I did not get a flat tire in the desert on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. You could be stranded on a cold highway in Alaska or North Dakota far from a service station and freeze to death from extreme cold temperatures.
When I returned home, I dealt with Avis's legal department. I stated that under the Uniform Commercial Code, which is the law of the land in all 50 states, that every consumer product must include an implied warranty of fitness for intended use. And I argued that for a rental car to be fit for its intended use, that it must have a spare tire. Tires go flat. That is why most cars have spare tires.
Avis decided that I had a good point and in good faith compensated me for my lost time and aggravation.
But Avis is not the real problem. Many car manufacturers now do not include a spare tire, not even those little donut tires that used to be provided for spares to drive fifty or so miles to a gas station.
The unbelievable part of this story is that many luxury cars, some costing north of $100,000 don't come with a spare tire. Remarkably, most Mercedes Benz vehicles do not come with a spare. Same with Porsche, Tesla, BMW and Jaguar. In fact, about 30% of all new cars do not have a spare tire.
AAA provided a list of new vehicles that don't offer a spare at all. Here they are in alphabetical order:
 · Acura NSX
 · Audi R8
 · Audi TT
 · BMW 2 Series
 · BMW 3 Series
 · BMW 4 Series
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