the other upside is that these tires had gone through four winters so were already pretty well toast anyways.
tread bars were showing.

at first blush the rear rim didn't look so bad.
I was wrong. both rims had severe failure.

 

I'm curious what the hole looked like. The damage looks like it was one of these

 

I'll be honest I never saw it. It was about 8:30 and dark.
I was merging onto 495 and looking at the traffic around me.
The ramp also climbs up to the roadway so you don't have the benefit of looking down towards the road surface.
As soon as we got home, I immediately notified the police of the hazardous condition so hopefully it is patched by now.

 

Service manager of 12 years at my Mercedes dealership says the low profile has been a bone of contention ever since they went to it. He says they have begged the powers that be to go back. Every year at pothole time he has many customers/owners hitting the roof when they find out the cost to replace wheels.

 

well Dave as I said, fortunately while these were OEM, these were just the "cheap" winter wheels.
They run about 800 bucks a pop new. 150-200 used on ebay.
I bought my set for $500 locally and while technically used they were basically new.
Shortly after buying his E350, The previous owner had bought whiz bang after market wheels and promptly totaled it.
At least they weren't my AMG wheels, which came on my car, which run $1100 each although apparently are out of production.

 

Ouch! Sorry to see this. This happened to us years ago in our Prelude. 4X4 piece of wood in the highway that I couldn't avoid.

 

I never actually saw the pothole but my wife drove by tonight and said a large portion of the road had been repaved.