ATLANTA — There's an important question you need to ask before you buy a new vehicle: Does this car come with a spare tire?
"I was shocked. I just said, 'You just got to be kidding me.' I never thought it was a question I had to ask when I'm buying a new car," said car owner Mike Flannegan.
As Channel 2 consumer advisor Clark Howard found, many of the new cars on the market do not come with a spare.
"About a third of the cars sold now do not have spare tires," said Garret Townsend with AAA.
In an effort to make cars more fuel efficient, some manufacturers have stopped supplying them.
Mike Flannegan found out he didn't have a spare when he went to the repair shop for a slow leak.
"They said we can't fix it and we can't order the same tire, so let's put your spare on it, you can take it to another shop and that we didn't have a spare," Flannegan said about having to replace a flat recently.
In its place Flannegan found an inflator kit, but those only work in specific situations.
"Some of the challenges with an inflator kit is that really what's lodged in the tire has to be center tread, can't be on the side and what made it go flat in the first place has to still be in there," Townsend said.
Which means you will need to be towed.
"It takes a 20-minute problem and changes it into an entire day's event for a little flat tire," Flannegan said.
According to Howard, you have around a 4 in 10 chance that your new car will not have a spare tire.
Howard found what many people do is when their tires wear out they keep the best of the four when they replace them, buy an extra rim and keep that as a spare tire. That way you're not stranded by the side of the road.
WSBTV
