tires were a lot less reliable than they are now, and i mean to the point that you really needed to be ready to change a flat every time you drove your car.. they didn't fail all the time, but they failed at a much higher rate and when they did it was usually catastrophic.. modern tires tend to deal with punctures and failure in general a lot better than the inner tube tires used prior to the 80s.. and obviously nobody had a cell phone to call for help..
so you kept work gloves in there for changing a flat tire