oldduke, I'm back from pushing my luck for another 2K miles without tire trouble but I was thinking about it the whole time instead of being comfortably, blissfully ignorant. There was a time back a few years when I had this great idea to ditch the donuts and put full sized spares in the cars, which I did, and then for whatever change of mind put the donuts back again, so I was wondering about your question of whether donuts had existed back when this car was made. Now that I'm home again, I looked in the owner's manual to find the reference to the "compact spare" and read the date code, which is decade ambiguous, but compatible with the build date of the car. So I think the original donut found its way back into the trunk.

As in the manual, the use is specified to allow the car to limp to a tire shop, not to finish a cross-country itinerary, and that is all I expect of it, if it at least gets me off of the Interstate. I've read several accounts of owners finding these long-expired tires in shreds, unused in their wheel wells, so I think I will plan ahead to get this one out of the car before the next fate-tempting travel begins.


--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.