Glad I'm still alive.

[Dr.AK]

WOW! Could that happen cause of to much stretch ?

Only if you run not enough tire pressure, but not because of too much stretch, when running not enough tire pressure this can happen to any tire. When running too much stretch it's more likely to pop off the bead of the tire, even though that is unlikely as well, but I've heard of it happen to some guys over on wheel-whores.

In this case it was clearly a tire failure cause by a failure in the material of the tire itself.
There was no stretch to speak of (205/40 on a 7x17 or something like that), the tire was correctly inflated and nothign was rubbing.

[D-rock]

WOW! Could that happen cause of to much stretch ?

[Stephen]

Ouch. glad noone was hurt

[Dr.AK]

Like I said, I'm VERY glad I'm still alive and I thank my friend Haiko for having reacted so fast.

Story:

We were going to a VW Show today with me riding passenger in Haiko's GTI.

Autobahn, left lane, around 170-180 km/h / 105 - 111 mph. A Z3 tailgating us. Suddenly the rear of the GTI starts to slide, Haiko shouts "What the hell?!" and tries to hold the car steady. I look in the passenger side mirror and see the passenger side rear tire flapping alongside the wheel and the shocked face of the Z3 driver as he steps on the brakes like there's no tomorrow, and if Haiko hadn't managed to get the car stabilized and onto the shoulder of the Autobahn, there might have not been another day for any of us.

Inspected the tire, whole inner sidewall ripped apart. Tires were bought new this April, correctly inflated and nothing was rubbing. We guess it must be a failure in the material of the tire or something.

All I can say is that I am very glad Haiko managed to get us out of there alive. Had he not stabilized the car, we would have crashed either into the guardrail with other cars crashing into us or crashed into one of the other traveling cars and maybe even more...