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30 • Talking Tyres
by Colin Mileman Run-flat
Tyres
First-world rules for third-world reality
The concept of run-flat tyres is a brilliant one, with the main advantages
revolving around improved driving safety. But is it really suitable for South
African roads?
Despite being a first-world solution, on face value, run-flat tyres make fantastic
sense in South Africa.
No-one wants to become another devastating addition to the deplorable
crime statistics after being forced to stop on the side of the road to change a
tyre, or facing the dangers of doing so in traffic. Therefore the ability to drive
to a safe location, even at a snail’s pace, has real merit.
Also, the general calibre of driving talent in this country is less than
commendable, so the prospect of swapping a horrendous blow-out for
stable handling characteristics, backed up by a monitoring system’s subtle
electronic warning that a tyre is losing pressure has great appeal.
Car designers will also tell you that throwing the spare wheel and jack in
the bin frees up the creativity of their pen strokes, while engineers will point
to the complementary benefits of reduced vehicle weight and the resultant
improved fuel efficiency, as well as the increased boot space it achieves.
But this is where I stick my flag in the ground and say that currently in SA,
unless you habitually travel no more than 80 km from a mainstream metro
tyre dealer (which in a car-mad country devoid of public transport is highly
unlikely), run-flat tyres are totally unsuitable and irreconcilable with SA
motorists’ needs.
My main rationale revolves around the South African map. Examining a run-flat
tyre support network map provided by one tyre manufacturer, I was drawn to
the vast 1 200 km void that separates Bloemfontein and Cape Town on the N1.
Now I, for one, don’t want to be stranded with a flat, um… run-flat tyre in the
middle of a 45-degree Karoo summer, literally hundreds of kilometres away
from a suitably qualified and (expensively) equipped RFT centre where the 80
km range at 80 km/h just won’t cut it.
In Europe, 1 200 km will get you from Paris in France, through Germany to
Austria’s capital Vienna – and you’ll probably never be more than 50 km away
from a major city, or a first-world run-flat specialist. So there the concept
works. But in good ol’ SA, where vast open spaces abound (think Northern
Cape, where most tyre companies have just one run-flat centre for the largest
province in the country), that’s simply not the case.
And that’s assuming you’re able to drive the nominal ‘run-flat’ distance in the
first place. Considering the decrepit nature of many local roads, a complete
tyre-and-rim write-off due to a pot-hole or a strategically placed rock will
stop you dead in your tracks, and could leave you totally immobile for many
lonely and potentially dangerous hours, and hundreds of kilometres away
from help.
Without giving the customer any choice in the matter, and based on the
Eurocentric nature of the SA market, BMW insists on fitting run-flats to its
new-generation products including the popular 3-Series, along with the 1
and 5-Series, the MINI, the X5 and X6. Why run-flats are specified on a sport
utility vehicle (or whatever BMW chooses to call their X-models) is beyond
me, considering their supposedly multi-terrain nature.
BMW backs this up with the supposed reassurance of BMW On-Call
assistance in the event of a flat tyre. But if I’m stranded in Putsonderwater
where the one and only horse died long ago, I’ll face a similar fate before a
replacement tyre arrives.
This brings me to the issue of availability. On a recent media event, of all the
vehicles on the trip, a BMW X6’s 20-inch 35-profile tyre was the one and only