Been a number of posts with advice on tire rotation and it seems to be the concensus that it isn't necessary. That said, I decided that in any case, rotating can not do any harm and since I wanted to check out the jack etc I went ahead and rotated. I put the spare on front right, then mounted the tire removed at rear right, moved it to front left, moved it to rear left, then moved it to front right and stored the spare. (I used the rotation pattern recommended by Buick).

A few observations: The tire wear was greater on the front than the rear, though perhaps not as significantly different than what I expected. Most importantly, there was no trace of cupping on rear tires which really kind of surprised me. I figured since the rear tires support so little weight that at least some cupping would be evident at 8500 miles without prior rotation.

Conclusion: Rotating probably is not necessary except to the extent that it will insure the tires all wear out at once. Other posts suggesting that it is okay to wear out the front tires, move the rear forward and replace only the rear tires are correct.

That's not to say I intend to do that, but it appears that will in fact work without compromising the tires in any way.

 

I rotate mine front to back every 3 to 4,000 miles...Some tires have a rotation direction as mine do and if you put them on the opposite side they will be going the wrong way....

 

Advanced tire rotation 101

Rotate every month (due to driving events)

Wear out the fronts more than the back- mostly outer edges.

Move the fronts to the rears and rear to the fronts on the same side of the car (due to tires being directional) but...

The former left front is dismounted and remounted on the rim from the right front and vice versa. Now the worn outer edge is on the inside and is ready to be rotated next month to the front for some great traction.

Works great.

Edit: You first wear the fronts down, takes a bunch of rotations since mostly the tread is wearing on the front and rears but eventually some hard cornering will wear one set enough to make the tire flip worth the effort. No I don't have the machine at home but I know someone that does it for about $20 each and my tires cost alot so might as well make that tread wear a bit longer. You don't need to flip both sets of fronts and rears unless they are worn and you don't wait until one edge of the tread is completely worn, just worn enough so it's much more than on the outer edge of the other set.

Anyway if you were to look at my three year old Max performance tires they would look pretty good.

 

I need to buy a tire mounting machine...

My left side tires are half the tread of the right.

 

Frequent rotations are probably safer because handling would be more consistent if the front and rear tires always have similar levels of wear.

But BMW likely doesn't want to see you very often, since if it were recommended it would then have to be covered under the service agreement on their dime. That's also why they specify a 15,000 mi oil change interval (way too long for between rotations) and since there would be no other reason for you to schedule appointments that frequently anyway...

I have a cheapo Harbor Freight tire changer and would never use it on nice aluminum wheels because it's not exactly touchless The tire iron is actually dragged around the edge of the wheel to dismount or mount

 

MINI now recommends tire rotation in the R56 Owner's Manual. From page 93 of the PDF:

 

You are kidding right? How did you rotate in your spare? Even if you have a spare, it should be just a donut, I'll admit that makes me scratch my head .

 

He's just putting the spare on to let the car down while he moves the tire to the other side so he doesn't have to put all 4 corners of the car on stands or on a lift.