Certified Pre-Owned Useless

MDC, You'd be well-advised to ask on the A6 forum on Audiworld, there'd be more folks there with similar cars - I'd venture to say that it would be "originally equipped" with whatever was in the trunk, since it makes no sense to ship the cars from Germany (/Hungary/?) with nothing in the place of the spare, and then ship a container-full of spare tires. Of course, this does not apply to Lorne's case, unless the wrong tire was put in at the factory (hey, it happens, I've seen such a mixup at a different manufacturer => rear axles placed on one truck forward in the line for half of a shift, error noticed when wheel bolt pattern did not match). The story you were given about the reasoning for the donut does not ring true (obviously, if the fs tire fits....) - it's more likely that, given the number of different wheel options the buyer is given, it makes more $en$e to put a generic spare in there, where all they'd have to do is match the bolt pattern. It's nice to have a FS spare (mostly because you can drive as normal to the repair centre), but most of the time people forget to keep it inflated, and it's flat when they need it a few years down the road. Quattro and many AWD systems don't really take kindly to throwing an untravelled spare tire into tire rotations, not to mention directional tread patterns (this is my left side spare, that's my right side spare?). Some manufacturers are deleting the spare tire altogether, opting for a "spare-in-a-can" inflator/patch.....and there's "run flat" tires....... Cheers! Steve Sears

"MDC" wrote in message news:toWFe.2966$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.nyc.rr.com...