So the car got a flat on a rear tire one Saturday morning. No big deal you'd think, especially as it was slow and lost the air on the driveway. Normally you'd just change the wheel and drop off the flat for repair or replacement. 20 mins of inconvenience. Unfortuantely there's no spare by design.

So we call Saturn assist as one is supposed to. We wait around until mid afternoon then the assist guy insists on searching the car for a spare just in case we're idiots, then decides he can't tow it as the car is front wheel drive and the flat is on the rear. I suggest he swap a tire to resolve the problem, which, eventually he does, once all the additional authorizations are done. 90 mins after arrival, the car is then towed to the local dealership 15 miles away.

I call and they say they don't have the tire and can't get one until the middle of the next week at best. They suggest I buy a Hankook. I point out that the tires are low resistance for the VUE GL, and mixing types isn't good practice. Oh, they say, you're right, we'll order one. I suggest that the dealership keep tires in stock as we're not the only people who will get a flat from time to time - this seems like something they can't do.

So, Thurs of the following week we get the GL back. Saturn has turned a 20 minute inconvenience into a 5 day issue. What would happen if we were out of the area? We'd be truly stuck.

There really was no reason that the Saturn engineers had to use the spare compartment for the batteries. They're not that big and I'm sure somewhere else could have been used.

So I ended up buying a used hub and wheel so I can take the crisis out of a simple thing most of the time.

What a useless design and poor customer service from Saturn. I despair of these people.

Ford used the spare tire area on the Escape... at least I think thats what the area was meant for in the first place as far as I can tell....

They then mounted a spare tire UNDER the car.... I'd have to say not having a spare is a pretty dumb idea on the Saturns.

I believe Honda also eliminated the spares.

Of course, in Detroit most SUV and truck owners that have externally mounted spares take them off before they're stolen so we're not in any better shape.

Would it have killed them to put an eternally mounted donut tire under the car even? (I wanted to buy a donut and figure out a mount arrangement but these things cost a fortune after-market so I nixed the idea).

Heck, perhaps I could padlock it if I lived in Detroit :-). For now, the spare lives in my garage so local problems can be solved by a call back home - a bit inconvenient but better than the alternative. Longer journeys will require a bit more thought though I do have one of those rooftop shells that might mount on the roof rails and do the trick.

(By the way, I've seen much debate about this - I had a VUE before this GL. The old cross rails fit despite what Saturn will tell you, and we had Saturn take them off the old car and put them on the new ones when we bought it. I'm talking about the basic black ones, not the later high chrome glossies). So if anyone cares to debate further, trust me, they fit as nothing changed up there over all the years of the VUE I).

I guess the bottom line is, if the tires aren't readily available, Saturn needs to back us up by always having some somewhere that can rescue us. Getting a tow 24/7 is no use if you're 500 miles from home with a 5 day turnaround really is it. Ditto on run flats - so I can get it to Saturn, then they still won't have the tire - same problem. Ah, you say, they give you that spiffy little kit with the sealant gunk and an inflator. True, that will work for small temporary patches to get you to the dealer. Guess what - if you use it, the tire can't be repaired and you need another one so back to the 5 day turnaround. All in all, Saturn need to step up with a solution.

As soon as these tires go, I think I'm just going to abandon the low rolling resistance in favor of something common. At least then someone will have it in stock.

Honestly, with this, the numerous other quality issues we've had, the move to steel panels, and the oversold fuel economy, I think this will be the last of our line of Saturns. Sad but we're feeling driven away really and Saturn is just another GM division now.

What makes this even worse (for your dealer) is that the tire IS common. Too many folks think that the tires on the VUE GL are some wacky, expensive, unusual hard-to-find tires. They aren't. They aren't special in any way other than that they have lower rolling resistance than the standard VUE's tires (which I believe are Bridgestone Duellers). The exact same General Ameri-GS60 tires were standard equipment on lots of other GM cars, including my father-in-law's Buick and my friend's Chevrolet Colorado pickup. You can pick them up for $64 each at the Tire Rack. There's no excuse for why it takes so long for your dealer to get one.

We may not like that the GL doesn't have a spare (though it honestly doesn't bother me--if it did, I would just do what you did and get a donut and put it in a canvas bag), but we're going to see this more and more. Even the new Pontiac G8 doesn't have a spare. Manufacturers are dumping them in the name of space usage and fuel efficiency. Between my wife and I, we haven't had a flat in nearly 200,000 miles of driving. We did have a leak in one of the VUE's tires last year, so I just topped it up, drove to the nearest tire shop, and had it repaired. Cost twelve bucks.