Rik, not to drag my 2Cts out any further, but buy a used/spare wheel
and tire and toss it in the back. I've hauled a complete set of four
big 19s with tires mounted and still had room for a lot of other stuff;
my point is a "real spare", packed in your car, while not handy, would
be a solution. I'll shut up now!

Good idea - but you haven't seen my wife's capabilities at listing 'essentials' for a trip have you? A team backup vehicle may be worth looking into though.

Passenger door/ glass won’t open.
 

Possibly the power supply cable within the door itself? I had a similar problem after I had the speakers uprated and the firm that did the job forgot to reconnect it.

:rofl:

You have to train her...we do week long trips in our VetteVert,
with 2 sets of golf clubs, cameras, clothes & "stuff", without
any problems. Our X5 is cake, by comparison, and I think your X3
has more rear compartment room than our X5.

You can always buy stuff along the way...;)

The Colonies? :D Do Brits still refer to the U.S. as the Colonies?

I just picked up the book "1421 The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies which gives empirical evidence that America was discovered and settled by the Chinese. Where they were when the Brits came over, I don't know, I haven't read the book yet. Maybe they ate some bad fish.

I still have a couple hundred pages to go to complete "Visions of Jazz" by Gary Giddings, the definitive work on the history of Jazz.