This Foldable Space Saving Spare From 1967 Was Too Clever For This World
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
There's nothing particularly interesting about the space-saver spare tire in your car. Other than the fact that it's an undersized piece of metal and rubber meant only to get you home or to a garage in the case of a flat tire, it's pretty unremarkable. For example, it doesn't just fold open like an intricate piece of origami being disabled by a flat-paper enthusiast. The thing is, though, it wasn't always this way. We used to have real innovation in the spare tire space, and this wild contraption from B.F. Goodrich in the mid-1960s is a perfect example of that.
What we've got here is a collapsible, foldable space-saver tire that hit the road before man walked on the moon. A patent drawing shows a foldable piece of rubber with tread on it, curved into three distinct sections. Once air is introduced through an included tire-inflator, the three sections unbend to create what looks — for all intents and purposes — like a normal spare tire.
From what I can tell, it was first fitted to General Motors' muscle cars of the era. This made a lot of sense, considering they had small trunks, so engineers would do what they could to make the most out of the limited room they had. It's hard to say just how long this particular tire stuck around, but there have been a few different collapsible spare tires since then, notably in products from Audi, Volkswagen, and Porsche.
There's some sort of enthusiast community surrounding these tires, too. A listing online is asking over $1,150 for the 14-inch space saver. There's also currently one for sale on eBay for $500, and it includes an orange rim!
First had experience
We've got at least a little bit of a first-hand account of how B.F. Goodrich's tire operated, too. During a March 1967 Motor Trend test of the Pontiac Firebird, the reviewer took the time to inflate and drive on the spare. Here's what they had to say at the time:
Like everyone else seeing this spare for the first time, we were curious and perhaps a bit skeptical about how this little band of rubber could grow up to be a tire. So...using the canister of gas fitted with a short hose that comes with the tire, we removed the spare and proceeded to inflate it. It started to assume a contorted dish shape, and just as we were ready to exclaim "Aha!," it suddenly popped into the form of a very ordinary looking tire. No less spectacular was the way it went through the exact reverse of this ritual and reverted to its original compact state when we deflated it.
A YouTube Short shows just what the reviewer and the patent talked about. As the guy inflates the tire, the sidewall rolls out to reveal a relatively normal-looking tire. Deflating it reverts it back to its original shape, and I cannot imagine that's great for rigidity.
Of course, at this point, these tires are the better part of 60 years old, so the one in the video is a bit worse for wear, but you get the gist. It doesn't seem like the technology caught on and spread very much, but if you're looking for a more modern version of similar technology, this video from Auto Buyers Guide does a great job of demonstrating what a collapsible spare from Vredestein looks like today. The Vredestein Space Master didn't come around until the late 1970s, nor was it widely adopted outside a few German automakers, but in both cases, it's a cool piece of technology, and it's definitely more inspired than the can of Fix-A-Flat most cars come with now.