We owned our old Ulysse Prestigio for nearly ten years and in all that time we never had to run the car with the spare on (i.e. never had a puncture on a drive).

The newer Prestigio we bought came with the spare in the back boot area mainly due to the winch being broken. I bought a new carrier off fleabay and fitted it hoping to restore the spare to it's normal location. However, after a bit of headscratching I soon realized that the spare would not locate in the locking postion this was down to the fact that this Ulysse came with another 16" alloy (which are much thicker) whereas our original came with a steel spare wheel.

Now I'm wondering how many people have changed the spare and fitted an alloy to the carrier and then continued on their journey? This could be rather dangerous as you would be relying on the tension of the cable to hold the wheel in place - a bit scary!

So unless I'm missing something here I've got to say what an awful design the spare wheel carrier is - lets say, if you are going on holiday and have the car filled up where on earth are you supposed to store the alloy safely if you need to change the wheel?!!

Mine has an alloy under the car; winch is 90% shot and wont lift wheel all by it self... and there is nothing else holding the spare in place? Is something missing then on mine?

can you post a picture of the winch? Maybe there are 2 types (but I doubt it!)

The problem on mine is that the alloy wheel is too thick for the locating lug to lock back into the winch mech.

(you can test the lock yourself by removing the spare wheel and winding up the cable, the lug should retract into the winch and when the black handle in the boot area is put back into the normal position you should not be able to pull the winch cable down)