I strongly disagree. I've had several bent rims over the last 30 years with no tire damage. And I've only had one tire damaged by a massive sink hole on the Tappan Zee bridge that destroyed the tire and rim beyond repair. There are just too many variables to say that the rims are defective, or can't carry the rated weight of the car, etc.
If TR does anything to ameliorate the issue, it will be to just get it off their plate, not because the rims are actually defective. Like I've said before, potholes and bent rims happen. Unless the rims are actually cracked and have evidence of defects, I really don't think there's anything to be done here, except oil the squeaky wheels, so to speak.
I am not sure what is the relevance of
"several bent rims over the last 30 years with no tire damage" for the situation with the Luganos. Your incidents were spread over thirty years, presumably with different wheels and on different cars. In the case with Luganos all 7 bent wheels where observed within 2-3 weeks, all with the same model of wheel, from the same manufacturer, on cars of the same model.
I have questioned guys at the tire shop I've been using for many years about the incidents of bent wheels and no damage to the tires. I was told that it happens some times, in about 20% of the cases, definitely not in the majority of the cases.
In my situation there were two separate incidents in the span of 8 days, with
ALL four wheels bent without any damage to the tires and any signs that damaged wheels came in direct contact with the pavement before, during or after the incidents. All incidents happened when I was driving 30-35 mph.
To top the above off, another person (RainmakerJL) reported similar incident with another three wheels that were bent without damage to the associated tires, ironically three days after posting that he did not have any issues on notoriously bad NYC roads (
Four Rial Lugano 19 wheels bent in two weeks - are they up to the task? - Page 7).
So here we have 3 separate reported cases in the span of 2-3 weeks with 100% of wheels that were bent without damage to the tires. This does not conclusively prove anything, but surely makes questioning the quality of these wheels very prudent.
I take offense to your remark about "squeaky wheel". As I posted before, I do not expect TR pay for the damaged wheels; I do expect them to address this issue with the manufacturer, so these wheels can be professionally tested and situation properly investigated, rather than, as you seem to suggest, all these incidents be dismissed as freaks of nature. If wheels are found defective, the manufacturer should step up and pay for the defective wheels. Dismissing this will not help any of the three parties involved: neither the consumers, nor the Tire Rack, nor the manufacturer.
As an update, I acknowledged the obvious and bought four 19" cyclone wheels from Tesla SC on last Thursday, took them to my tire shop and installed Blizzak LM60 that were removed from the Luganos on Tesla wheels; now very happy to be driving my Model S after suffering through the 10 days that I was using my old ICE car. The 4 damaged Luganos were picked up by UPS today and are en route to Tire Rack. Stay tuned for the updates.
Funny enough, and against any reasonable odds, I managed to hit a moderate pot hole while driving from the tire shop to home, at 65mph, with no damage to the Cyclones.
