That is such a shame as I Was looking forward to test driving a car a little bigger than the civic / auris estates :(. Would have been happy to have bought a spare but from what I gather there is not even a space for one...

Ho hum.

Mark

Handy thread, thats Mazda 6 off the list of potential used cars too, mind you Mazda Diesels have been on the not on your nelly list for some years now.

No spare wheel?, you won't be selling me that car, new used or banger.

Hope you were not considering a diesel?

The 'no spare' problem put me off too but in the end I purchased one, couldn't resist. What I did avoid was a diesel version, and it turns out to have been a very good decision. (see forums [mazda6oc.co.uk] of all the problems being encountered) the petrol is very fuel efficient and pulls like a diesel IMHO.

The saloon is longer than an estate by 60/65mm with a vast boot, you lose some space as the 'spare wheel well' is too small for even a space-saver (the kit option from Mazda comes with battens to lift the boot floor cover/mat).

I managed to get a similar style alloy wheel off fleabay for £40 and a cheap new tyre for £50 and stuck that in my boot, but the boot is vast. Yes it encroaches a bit but I'm happy as the kids fled the nest ages ago, and there is plenty of space for 4 in my opinion. Ripped out carefully the gunge kit/polystyrene bit and got a nice wheel cover. I gain some depth this way as compared to Mazda expensive solution. The wheel requires an 8mm? bolt and clamp plate to secure though, but had that in my garage LOL.

Still a b***** pain that car manufactures/EU put us through this cr@p!

Loving the car tho' each time I drive it :-)

Thanks for the suggestion. I am not keen on vw group card or those with a timing belt.

Car needs to have a chain and a spare tyre.

M

"Hi Mark - some of us dont think of places in Devon as being remote :-)"

Remote or not, what matters is whether your mobile will work: there are apparently still 30,000 miles of UK roads where there is no mobile reception.

As I've said many times before, I'd like the little men in suits who design cars with no space even for a space-saver to get a gash from a pothole on a road like that, too big a gash for their favoured can of gunk to repair..

Mark - add the Skoda Octavia to your list., either as a hatchback or estate. Lots of room, and a spare wheel is an inexpensive option.

Great point Avant. This applies to lots of things like light fittings, self assembly furniture, plumbing fittings etc etc, the list is long. I would make the actual designer assemble one every hour on the hour for a week and see what he thinks of his design then. Half the time you need 9 inch fingers with magnetic tips and the strenght of Superman.

As for spare wheels I quite agree. However if Joe Public buys these vehicles then they get what they deserve. Vote with your feet and walk out of a garage that tries to sell you a car that cannot accommodate a spare wheel. I think that may have some affect on them.

Cheers Concrete

I am not keen on vw group card or those with a timing belt.

Nothing wrong with VW group cars, don't believe everything you read on here. Had 5 now and never had any expenses other than the expected ones.

Nothing wrong with timing belts. Since 1976 we have had 11 cars fitted with belts and never had a breakage. Only had to replace 2 as per the manufacturers scehedule and it was not a shock since I had budgeted for the costs when I bought the cars.

Had several cars with rattly chains and leaky covers. Never bothered fixing them, just turned up the radio and cleaned the drive regularly.

Know which I prefer given the choice.

Went to look at the Mazda 6 yesterday. Its on our short list to replace the Leon but as many have said above I will not buy a car where there is no provision for carrying a spare.

In the showroom I lifted the boot floor and was confronted by a polystyrene tray carrying the pump and glue etc. Lifted the tray out which revealed a spare wheel shaped hollow with a welded nut thingy at the bottom for securing the spare. Asked salesman about a spare and he said that the spacesaver was approx £400 but suggested I could get one cheaper elsewhere. Don't thing a full size wheel would fit without seriously raising the boot floor.

So based on that its still on our short list but some other issues probably mean its now off.

I flag this as I don't recall the 9-3 being very well received when it was first launched, but it has done us fine

The 9-3 was a Vauhall Vectra (or was it Cavalier) with a different body. Considering the Vauxhall was underwealming the Saab was unlikely to be a class leader regardless of what Saab did to it. But I think its fair to say that the Saab was probably better assembled than a Vauxhall so they have stood the test of time pretty well. My boss had a new one about 10 years ago. At 2 weeks old it lost power on the M4, made awful noises and he had trouble getting it across 3 lanes of a busy motorway. The bolt securing one of the cam pulleys had come loose and the engine was destroyed, hardly blame Saab when the engines came from GM. After a new engine it ran well for another 5 years and 150,000 miles.

The 9-3 was a Vauhall Vectra (or was it Cavalier) with a different body.

You're thinking of the Saab 9-5, not the 9-3. The 9-5 was based on the Vectra B, saving me a long drive for suspension parts when we had our Saab!

Both the New 900, renamed as 9-3 mk1, and the 9-5 mk1 used the GM2900 platform which Vauxhall had used for the Cavalier mk3 (Vectra-A) and Vectra mk1 (Vectra-B).

The 9-3 mk2 used the Epsilon platform (Vectra-C) and the 9-5 mk2 used Epsilon II (Insignia).

The boy-racers used to get spares for their Cavaliers from Saab as they were cheaper!

Thanks Engeineer Andy, thats put the question of room for a space saver to bed.

However, the cost quoted is outrageous and under no circs would i pay that, more to the point that blatant profiteering when they have a semi captive audience of new car type buyer speccing their new vehicle, i find distasteful at best.

I've received an email response from Mazda, and they confirm that all new UK-spec Mazda cars, with the exception of the MX-5, do have the space below the main boot floor and ability to store a space-saver space tyre, including the Mazda5, 2 and CX-3, which many people have said do not. The ~£400 extra for buying one with one fitted (via the dealership, not factory-fitted apparently) is still in my view, extortionate, given Volvo only charge a 1/4 of that.

Unless Mazda have redesigned the boot on a 6 since September 2015 then I feel certain that the "battens" I mentioned in an earlier post, are required.

These lift the carpet/floor of the boot because the space saver is deeper in width than the wheel well.

A chap in the mazda 6 forum did his own and describes how he used wood and a second hand wheel to save paying money-maker-mazda.

I strongly suspect Mazda are playing on words here, yes their cars may have "space below the main boot floor and ability to store a space-saver" BUT it's at the expense of losing boot space.

Edited by nailit on 02/09/2016 at 13:13

have you looked at the Peugeot 308?

We have, the estate.

Looked last year when the wife swapped hers. The 1.2 130 PS model looked great on paper and had good reviews. Huge boot but absolutely pitiful rear seat space. I am 5'9" and witn the drivers seat in a normal position I could not sit behind myself. The Kia Ceed SW she had at the time had a much better compromise between passenger and boot space as does the Nissan Note she eventually bought.

Its a non starter if you expect to carry adults in the rear. And the estate supposedly has mmore rear space than the hatch, how bad would that be.

What were Peugeot thinking about.

Three things to remember

Secondly - any distress purchase of tyres is a costly event, they cost enough when planned, but to pay the local garages's rack rate for a tyre is adding insult to injury - and remember you'll get what they have in stock, whcih may not be the same brand / quality as you had on the car before thus reducing fuel efficiency / road performance or whatever quality that made you select that tyre in the first place

Thirdly - assuming you do change the tyre roadside, think where you will be putting it when moble again. No full size tyre will fit into a spacesaver bay, very likely the tyre will be wet / dirty so not the ideal back seat passenger, if you vehicle is full of luggage ...

So that's three good reasons for having a full size good quality spare wheel & tyre under the boot!

Frankly, if space is tight points 2 & 3 are good reasons for carrying a spare tyre without the wheel in a bag in the car. (can be rotated as tyres changed or sold on if not used).

Good point but the weight of a tyre is quite surprising and you don't gain much by not having it attached to a wheel since quite often these days chances are it's an alloy wheel.

Ref. Volvo spacesavers - it depends on which model of Volvo.

Its a V60 T4 we are considering and none of the dealers we have visited have been able to show us a car fitted with a space saver, in truth none have had (or even seen) a T4 so no test drive yet, nearly given up on te car to be honest despite the great deals available. But the info from the Volvo brochure, the dealers and the site I linked to above all confirm that there is a loss of boot space with the space saver fitted but no source have been able to provide a figure, that is why I want to see one. It might well be that the lost space is the under floor storage but the boot is on the limit for our needs and we need to measure one with a space saver fitted.

With both the Mazda 6 and Volvo T4 being unavailable to drive in Petrol form having other issues we are currently planning to look at an Audi A4 Avant. On paper the boot is big enough and it has the cracking 1.4 TSi engine. It also has a space saver as standard. But its £4000 to £5000 more expensive.

Ref. Volvo spacesavers - it depends on which model of Volvo. I ordered the spacesaver for my V60, and this takes up all the space under the boot floor but doesn't raise it. It's flush with the seatbacks when they're lowered. Sure, a full-size spare would be ideal, but to insist on that would restrict the choice of car to a very few.

Engineer Andy - you sound like a prime candidate for a Skoda Octavia! Have a look at one (the estate is the same overall length as the hatch), but if you're buying secondhand avoid the DSG.

I did like the 'minimalist' styling of the Octavia (I also prefer the Mazda6 over the 3), but truth be told I'm ideally looking to downsize on my next purchase, or at least the car shouldn't be any bigger. If the Golf or Leon 3dr had been as reliable as their Japanese counterparts and actually had their 380 ltr boot space (and all in th one compartment), then I would've gone for one of them in 1.4 petrol (150bhp) form.

Smileyman - I didn't really like the styling of the 308 and again, French cars' reliability and dealerships aren't in my view on a par with the Japanese.

I'd actually go fo the next car size down if the boot space of the c sector cars wasn't good enough. I still think this idea of reducing weight (or whatever the reason) by changing first from full size spares to space-savers to nothing aside the glue is just plain daft, especially when boot sizes (usable space) appear to be going down as new models appear on the market.

I believe Volvo dealers get very few enquiries, let alone orders, for petrol engines. After my much-loved petrol Octavia, I hadn't really wanted to go back to diesel, but a good long run in a D4 persuaded me.

On a point of order - I'm aware of a number of lower mileage potential customers for a petrol Volvo being fobbed off by dealers who are only interested in selling diesels - chicken and egg comes to mind.

I wonder why they would do that - there must be a risk of customers definitely wanting a petrol car going elsewhere.

When we were swapping the wifes car last year it had got to be 100% petrol. The Volvo V40 was arguably one of the better lookers in the class and the wife liked it, with the 150PS petrol engine it looked like a contender. Local Volvo dealer simply said "we don't sell petrols since no one wants them". Wife does not suffer fools easilly when she is spending her hard earned cash so we were out of the showroom faster than it would have taken to call him an ass hole.

Tried the Mazda 3, another looker but considering it had a 2 litre petrol motor it was a slug, that is why I need to actually drive a 6 petrol rather than driving a diesel 6 and ordering a petrol if I like it which is what the salesman suggested I did.

Ford, VW and Nissan had petrol demonstrators, actually the Nissan we drove was brand new on trade plates taken out of stock. Loads of bling bits on it, wrong colour etc, presume they hoped we would buy it. At least they tried and it payed off, the Note we bought had the same engine and our choice of spec and colour.

For the record the Note did not have spare but has a huge well under the floor that a full size easilly fits into. The quoted Nissan boot space does not include this under floor space thus by fitting a spare you still get what you pay for. This also applies to the Qashqai which is on the perifery of my short list.

Hi,i dont suppose you still have the wheel and kit for the Mazda 6 do you,if not what size was it,16,or 17 inch,many thanks,John.

What happens to cars with a haldex type clutch ?
The manual sometimes stipulates a maximum difference in tread - so what happens when you put an unused spare on ? - does it have to go on the rear wheels to ensure that axle will turn more slowly than front (as haldex cannot run the rear faster than front).
If you have a flat on your new tyres, and a used spare - then do you have to put the spare on the front ?
I really can't see owners swapping tyres around on their posh softroaders - but then again, I guess they've not read the handbook or even checked for the existence of a spare.

Edited by Bilboman on 07/09/2016 at 23:29

The Peugeot 405 had its spare slung underneath the boot. Not sure of any other cars that had the same arrangement but as long as you gave it a clean and checked the pressure regularly, it was fine.

Sorry. Somehow posted a duplicate of above.

Edited by davecooper on 14/09/2016 at 13:55