Spare tires and engine bays once played nicely together. Could they do so again? Upon seeing the engine bay of the Ford Bronco Sport, our awesome commenter outback_ute made an interesting comment, as it is after all what awesome commenters do:
Looks like there is enough empty space under the hood to have a frunk. Maybe store the spare there lol
This got me thinking – could we once again perhaps see spare tires mounted in the engine bay?
With each new model, our cars get bigger. But it has been the modern trend to downsize engines. Those downsized engines require less space. Further, more conventional vehicles are going in the hybrid or mild-hybrid direction. This requires automakers to find room for batteries. A typical rear spare tire well would work great for a good size battery. Since batteries are heavy, and compact spare tires are light, to have the battery on the opposite side of the engine also allows it to produce sufficient chassis balance.
The downside is that vehicle wheel diameters seem to be getting bigger and bigger, too. There were plenty of cars with small engines and spare tires mounted under the hood decades back but those wheels, even full-size ones, were much smaller than today’s wheels. Aside from that, why couldn’t an automaker attempt to fit a compact space tire in the engine bay of a three-cylinder three-row SUV?
[Image source: commons.wikimedia.org]
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