Editorial: I’d rather run home than run flat

I am no car freak as my designation might imply yet I like ‘my’ car very much. Actually, I adore it, even though it doesn’t always seem the case. I have fallen in love with all the features, gadgetry and technological innovations BMW have thrown into its design.

Over the years many innovative car features have been developed and introduced some making it to the production line, others thankfully discarded.

The feature I simply cannot do without anymore, a rather basic one by today’s standards, is parking sensors, which bleep to my bumper’s content and to the content of my neighbours too.

I don’t even need to look through my rear-view mirror any longer. How’s that!

Then there is another feature which I’d get rid of quickly yet cannot.

It is those four 225/40 R18, low-profile run-flat tyres that keep my car on the road. What was BMW thinking of, seriously!

The advantage of these run-flats seems to boil down to safety – the claim is that if you have a puncture at high speed, the tyre will not explode and cause you to crash.

It also allows you to carry on your ‘long’ trip until you find a station to change the whole tyre.

Big deal, considering that it is ridiculously expensive. Two punctures in two months, which is quite normal, set me back €800, since these tyres need to be replaced and cannot be patched up like conventional tyres.

Worse still, I had to make do with a larger tyre for about three weeks each time until the galvaniser supplied me with one. Now how’s that for safety!

Irrespective of whether they last much less than conventional tyres, they definitely cause a harder ride, wrecking the car, including the alloy wheels themselves, and my back, in the process. Please give me back that spare wheel!

Run-flats are as bad an invention as the mechanical four-wheel steering system introduced by Honda in 1988 on its Prelude model, which allowed the car a tighter turning radius; or the Auto Organ in the 1900s, which was an actual organ keyboard attached to the back of a driver’s seat so passengers could play tunes during a drive; or, worse still, the idea of a car that could park vertically by having the driver tip the car onto a wheeled platform on the rear bumper.

The difference is that all these never made it to the production line or were discontinued immediately after... but the run-flats live on.

• Congratulations to Sergio Baldacchino for winning the first Sunday Times Motoring Facebook page competition.

It was priceless to see the expression on the face of this 23-year-old when he first caught glimpse of his old Golf newly wrapped in burnt orange.

See before and after pictures on pages 8 and 9 of this issue and also follow us on our Facebook page for more news and competitions.

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