Changing a tire is one of those things that you may as well accept is just going to happen at some point in your driving life. Well, if you have a car with a spare tire, at least. You can’t predict exactly when or where a tire may fail, which means that we often end up changing tires in less-than-ideal circumstances. On the side of a busy road, in the rain, at night, when you’re already tired and frustrated, a pack of angry weasels menacing you from the bushes – no one is ever happy that they have to pull over to change a flat tire. That’s why, ideally, car designers and engineers really should do all they can to make the process as painless as possible. Unless, it seems, you were working for Range Rover around 2013 to 2022 or so, when it seems perverse masochists were in charge of the whole spare tire process on the second-gen Range Rover Sport.
I know this sounds harsh, but I just recently happened to come across the procedure – complete with specialized equipment that sure looks like bondage gear – required to get a 2013-2022 Range Rover Sport’s spare tire out of its well so you can change the tire. It’s absurd. And it pisses me off.
I’m serious about the equipment looking like bondage gear: I have the actual equipment in this image twice, surrounded by S&M gear. See if you can pick the Range Rover parts!
Not so easy, is it?
Here’s how the process is shown in the owner’s manual, so you can get an idea of what those straps do:
It looks kind of like you’re rigging up some sort of ersatz tire swing back there, which might be a pretty good time, if only you weren’t doing this because you were stuck on the side of the road with a flat.
Here’s a video of the strap being actually used, or at least partially used, because the guy in this video admits that most Range Rover owners aren’t likely to actually, you know, do this:
If you don’t have this strappy contraption, you can buy one; Land Rover will sell it to you, part number LR124638, for $166.30, or you can find one on eBay for a bit cheaper:
Looking at forums, it seems to be pretty hit-or-miss whether or not these SUVs came with the strap-traption. There is at least one Range Rover Technical Service Bulletin that addresses cars that didn’t have the strap, so if you have one of these, maybe check that you actually have one.
The reason this thing exists at all is because that tire and wheel combination weighs about 100 pounds, and must be extracted from the spare tire well in the luggage compartment floor exactly vertically, because there isn’t any room to tilt it to get it out, as the air suspension compressor is mounted below the wheel well. Your only option to get it out is to lift straight up, and that’s effectively a physical impossibility to do, given the location, size, and weight of the tire.
This all just seems like such a terrible location for the spare tire, which leads to a miserable procedure for getting it out. First off, if you’re on a road trip and get a flat, you have to empty everything out of your cargo area to get to the wheel in the first place. This is not exactly an issue unique to Range Rover – plenty of cars have spare tires under the cargo floor – but in this case, it just seems all the more of a groin-punch because there was a time when Range Rover mounted their spare tires in a much better place: under the car.
This is how the prior generation Range Rover Sport stored its spare tire, and how it was accessed:
Look how much easier that is! You’d still have to move some luggage out of the way to get to that bolt that lowers the tire, but this sort of setup seems dramatically easier. That video above seems to show a smaller spare; this one looks more like a full-sized spare:
The old way was so vastly better, I can’t fathom why they changed it! I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered any car that requires setting up a makeshift pulley/hoist system just to get the damn spare wheel out. It just seems so cruel and punishing a thing to do to your customers. Imagine being on a long trip in your Range Rover Sport and getting a flat and looking in the back and struggling with that huge-ass wheel for 15 sweaty, profanity-filled minutes before realizing you need to rig up a whole freaking crane to get the damn thing out, using some strappy bullshit you’re not even sure you have? That’d be devastating.
Sure, some people have rigged up their own systems using ratchet straps and that sort of thing, but just the fact they had to do that at all represents a design and engineering failure on Range Rover’s part. Even if we assume that the well-heeled buyers of these cars aren’t the kind to debase themselves by changing their own tires, someone still has to do it! And, hell, what if you’re somewhere remote, where there is no help – you should be able to at least make a decent attempt at changing a tire!
This kind of unforgiving and heartless design just drives me nuts. It takes an unfortunate situation and just makes it so much worse, and for zero benefit that I can see. What’s the matter with an externally mounted spare wheel? This is an SUV, externally mounted spare wheels look great! There’s aftermarket options for these:
Range Rover could have come up with their own appropriately swanky version of this, with a fancy wheel cover or something, and maybe without blocking the taillight like this one does. They have good designers and engineers, they could figure it out! But no, instead they made something that is less convenient, eats more luggage room, is a daunting ass-pain to actually use, and is just worse overall, in every way.
Ugh. What a cruel spare tire design. It looks like the more recent ones still use this system, so I guess no one at Land Rover really seems to care.
But I care.
I think we need to call this a constraption.
100 lbs? And I thought that the “oversized” mud tires/wheels on my Jeep were heavy at ~75lbs. Can the strap be used to help get the tire on and off the hub as well, to avoid back injuries?
I don’t think Adrian was in charge when he was at JLR, but I’m sure he appreciates the benefit of the doubt
As the L405 (2013-2022 full-size) and L494 (2014-2022 Sport) are versions of the same thing, I believe my L405 has that same setup. I recall seeing this BDSM-looking harness in my cargo area, near the tire. I agree, it’s goofy. Thankfully, I’ve not had a flat yet…which is good, since I’m on 22″ wheels.
As for the L320 (2006-2013 Sport) in your last photo, I agree that this was much easier. Those had the tire properly under the car, and you just lowered it by winding it down, much like many ladder-frame vehicles. And indeed, the L320 did have a ladder frame. So did the L319 (2005-2009 LR3, 2010-2016 LR4) with which it shared a platform and structure. I helped a guy in a well-worn 2006 change his spare tire a few weeks ago and it was pretty simple, other than how long it took to raise the vehicle on that stupid suicide jack. And I had a 2016 LR4, whose tire I had to remove in order to install the tow hitch wiring harness once, so I’m familiar with that.
And ight now, I’m in a 2025 Defender 110 loaner (my Range Rover’s transfer case is still clunking on left turns, even after having been replaced). And the Defender has the spare tire nicely mounted on the back. That leaves a very generous under-floor storage area in the rear, since there’s also no third row on this one.
When I saw the image you created, I sort of felt like the proximity made it look more like bondage stuff, but that eBay listing somehow looks even more like bondage gear. I would absolutely rather my vehicle not come with a spare than need to go through the steps required for this one. Just put in a compressor and a can of fix-a-flat and most people will be fine.
“Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m a little tied up trying to change a tire.”
“And I think I might end up f-ed without some help…”
Yes, your typical *new* Range Rover owner has no intention of changing their own tire, but eventually they age to 3rd or 4th buyers who are very comfortable using all manner of ropes and levers to get heavy things moved out of places that someone’s stupid decision got them stuck.
https://expeditionportal.com/media/2014/09/08FALL_27_HILIFT13-1327×1000.jpg
$166? I can buy something that works on Temu much cheaper and would probably come in leopard print. …I mean, ahem, so unusual. :^)
Is it sad that seeing the strap in action somehow seemed more elegant than I imagined. At least there are no electronic parts in this contraption that can fail.
Well, it is British.
🙂
Counterpoint – Range Rover Sports are so stupid they make me want to scream. Just like every other “coupe” C/SUV – let’s make a utility vehicle with less utility and get morons to pay MORE for it!
But I don’t really care about whether it has a spare tire or how you get it out, because:
a. I haven’t had a flat tire on the road since *1989*. I had one go flat over two weeks in an airport parking lot (nail), inflated it with the compressor I keep in the trunk (didn’t even need the goo) and drove home. TPMS for the win, though it did not lose enough pressure in that 50 miles to set the light off. If it had, I would have gotten off the road and either inflated it again or called for a flatbed, depending on deflation rate.
b. In this era of distracted-driving texting morons, I am NOT changing a tire on the side of the road period, end of story. I am getting myself to a safe place, and then I am calling AAA to deal with the car. My life is worth the little bit of hassle.
Also, enough with the bagillion-pound wagon wheels already. I helped a friend of mine do a tire rotation on his EV6 and the weight of the damned things was *ludicrous*. He’s a small, elderly man and he literally could not have changed one of those if he wanted to. I am a big, strapping, middle-aged dude and it was all I could do to muscle the damned things around. Style over function bullshit.
Mmmm…I disagree. I have a 2020 full-size Range Rover Autobiography LWB (L405), and it takes up a gratuitous amount of space and drives very floaty, especially in the curves. And keep in mind that this is the one with the active cornering and other magic that only the ones with the supercharged V8 get (and possibly the PHEV); I imagine the baser versions with the V6 or I6 drive even more lazily.
Whereas, even though it’s a variant of the same basic platform…the contemporary Range Rover Sport (L494) has a much tighter driving style. It’s absolutely meaningfully different, even in the base versions and certainly in the performance ones like the SVR. I’d say it rivals the Cayenne. It also takes up a lot less space, with tidier dimensions than something like an X5.
Range Rover has been punishing owners since at least 1765, october 12 to be precise. It’s on the Sado part of the equation, clearly.
Also, wasn’t a well-known Goth car designer with a notorious misantropic tendency got involved in the design of this car? Just sayin’…
We’re all thinking it. Not that he would have had anything to do with this silliness, but let’s keep baiting him so he has to put in an appearance to defend his honor/school us plebians.
With all the bondage gear at my house, we might have a chance at extracting such a tire from such a vehicle without Range Rover’s own part, should the need arise. But that need better happen when a session isn’t taking place.
Your safe word is Goodyear.
No, the safe word is Hakkapeliitta
No, the safe word is “Lucas” and it kills the spark.
“They have good designers and engineers, they could figure it out!”
I’ve only worked on one project with JLR, and yet still the two senior engineers I met were the most obstructive, data-denying, arsehats I’ve ever met. One insisted that a solution that was in production with multiple other OEMs couldn’t work, and the other eventually agreed that regardless of the results of my study he’d already decided to go with the solution he’d first thought of, that was horribly compromised.
Having owned multiple JLR cars, you do get the sense they are engineered in a vacuum some of the time, with no regard given to industry conventions.
Fortunately, I find it endearing.
The straps can serve double duty when you and your SO are stuck on the side of the road waiting for AAA to pick you up when it breaks down, how thoughtful of JLR!
At that point, you’ve already been screwed. It’d be a long while before I’d be ready to go again.
This is how Jason explains his search history to his wife. “No look honey, see here’s the article it was for!”
She’ll probably think that he was searching for presents for her to use on him. There’s no way that Torch is a top.
I would say it’s lucky they even included a spare. Could be like a lot of models now that don’t even give you a donut for a spare.
The price for a replacement strap is the only thing more ridiculous than the design and necessity of it.