Very annoying - I live in the Boston area and I was coming down RT128 the other day near the Burlington Mall and I hit a reasonable sized pothole which destroyed the sidewall on my front left tire. The tires were new in May and maybe have 1000 miles on them. I have Micheline Pilot Super Sport 205 40ZR 18 tires mounted on 18" OEM R109 (JCW) wheels.

I saw the pothole emerge from under the car in front of me so I had no time to react. It made a loud thump when we hit the pothole but the car seemed fine. After I hit the pothole - at lower speeds - I could feel a very slight vibration that was new. At highway speeds the car felt completely normal. The car also tracked perfectly at any speed.

It wasn't until I stopped and looked at the tires that I saw the damage to the tire. The wheel looks fine but the sidewall near the bead looks almost as if it were cut by the wheel and this is why the sidewall was now bulging. The rear tire was completely fine.

I have now replaced the front tire - Tire Rack delivered a new tire in 2 days - so everything is now back to normal and the very slight vibration is gone.

I have never had a tire fail like this before so I am wondering if my experience is unusual.

 

This is common with any low profile tire. Hit a pothole deep and wide enough at speed and you can easily damage:
Wheel
Tire
Suspension
Alignment
Strut tower
All of the above

 

Check your rims as well.

18" rims are very susceptible to porthole damage.

 

Quite so. I had a high speed collision with a luxury liner, and hit every porthole on the starboard side. Extensive tire damage...

 

I checked the wheel very carefully and fortunately it looks perfect. Honestly the pothole didn't look that big - but I only saw it for a fraction of a second. It did make a fairly loud thump when we hit. I had 2 of my college age daughters in the car and I got no reaction from either of them.

The rear tire and wheel show no sign of the impact at all - is this normal that the front would see more damage than the rear. I had no time to brake so the weight distribution should have been neutral.

Anyway it seems fine now with the new tire. The Tire Rack price on the 18" Super Sports is a very reasonable $172.00 so with shipping the tire was less than $200.00 so I can't get too upset.

 

I was on a long weekend driving trip with a couple friends and near the end of the day, we were driving (too fast as it turns out) on Matole Road. This road is the one that you take out to the Lost Coast in Northern California and is probably the worst, most poorly maintained road in all of California. I'd been doint pretty well at picking out the really rough spots and slowing as needed, but a big pothole that was hiding in the shadow got me. I blew out both right side tires. No damage to the suspension, but I was left stranded out in the middle of nowhere. It took almost 3 hours to get a two truck out (no cell coverage out there either) and about 2.5 hours to get back to civilization. And to make it real exciting, just as the truck is starting to winch me onto the flat bed, it blows a hydraulic line and spews hydraulic fluid al over the hot exhaust system of the truck. I had visions of the truck going up in flames with my Mini strapped to the back. Fortunately all worked out OK and I got new tires the next morning and was on the road again by noon.

I run 215/40-18's.

 

I hate to sound like a troll, but I am sticking with my 16's. When the tread wears out I am going to 205-50 -16 non runflats. On my previous '08, I had 17's and I prefer 16's. The 205's are slightly smaller in diameter, but I'll live with the speedometer error.

 

Even though the wheel 'looks' OK, I'd still have it checked out. There may not be any dings in the rim but the wheel itself could still be knocked out of round enough to cause problems later. You could do it yourself by jacking up that corner clamp a pointer to something solid right at the edge of the rim and rotate the wheel to see if it has any wobble.

Thank you!!! I couldn't think of any way to comment on that without sounding snarky. Well Said.
Those nasty typo's have are good at sneaking in where you don't want them and some of them can be quite comical.