Hate them, pointless, and unneeded.

 

Cheeks = *** so in my world when you say something is cheeks it means it’s awful lol. Not to be confused with good cheeks like in Miami lol

 

Ok cool.
Well, all I know about miami beach and cheeks is mirror sunglasses are your friend.

 

Run flats are bad until you catch a major flat at the worst possible place and time, and they allow you to keep going.

 

......and a spare?

 

All of my cars have non-runflats and no in-vehicle spare. Two of them came from the factory that way. The others I ditched the factory RFTs on.

Now, I do have off-season sets in the garage for all but one of them that can serve as a spare if I'm at or can get home. That has come in handy a number of times over the past 20 years. But I've personally never encountered a situation where an inflator (which all the cars have) couldn't get me home, but an in-vehicle spare would have. Any time I've had a tire that wouldn't hold air at least temporarily, there have been multiple flats and/or broken wheels, so I would have needed multiple spares to avoid a tow.

 

Eh, thats so rarely happened in my life and I have had flats a run flat wouldn't have helped.

Nope. Neither car has a spare, the Pacifica came with no run flats and no spare. Both have inflators and fix a flat.

 

I was in a terrible rush once, and there was traffic piling up on the road I was on, so drove right over a curb to cross onto a highway that was running parallel to the road. As I did that, I caught a giant broken off valve from what probably was a blown up diesel out of a semi. Put a giant hole through the tire, instantly lost all pressure. I was sure glad i was in a car with runflats - I pulled the valve out and continued on my way for another 20-30 miles. The car drove pretty much like normal, not that I was pushing it.

 

But is it worth having compromised performance all the other times for that one time?

 

Hard to say, I'm kinda split on it. My x5 is not a performance car, so it doesn't really matter. I've only ever had run flats on it, both all season and winter wheel sets, but I think it rides just fine. If I keep it until the next tire change, I might put non run flats to see if the ride quality is any different.

 

Run flats have gotten better, when I got my S580 I held out for about 2,000 miles on the runflats but I finally did change them and the difference was noticable.

 

That wasn't quite what I was asking. I know that run-flat-equipped vehicles from the factory do not have a spare. What I meant was, that, if you took the effort to replace the run-flats with conventional tires, did you also buy a new spare (and wheel) with the other four new tires.....(in other words, five tires instead of four)? It's always nice to have a real spare tire, although it can beg the question of where to stow it in vehicles with very tight cargo space.

 

I replaced the terrible run flats that came with the SC430 almost immediately with regular tires and drove around for 20+years without a spare, no room to put it in a hardtop convertible unless you put it in the “useless” back seats(we often put groceries there in the rare cases we buy stuff driving it).

The 2017 AMG GT S also came with runflats, they are better and you expect very firm ride with this car anyway, so did not replace until couple years ago with regular Michelin PS4 tires, the ride improved noticeably.

The 2024 LC500 I got is the first year they come with regular tires as standard, previous model years are run flats. It has the Michelin PS5 which I am very happy with.

 

BTW, our Sienna AWD does not come with a spare tire either, although you ca purchase and install one.

 

At least the Sienna has plenty of room inside to stow one.