ClassicCar

Just speculation, but I can see how the powers that be could have looked at the trunk, which is big enough to rent out as a studio apartment, and said, We don't need no stinkin' spare tire well- plenty of room to just lay it in there! And then, a few years later, after many complaints about the tire being in the way (which it is), or, if you push it far enough out of the way, not being able to get to it without crawling in, decided to rethink their position and go back to the upright spare. Gotta remember too, that was back in the days when you USED your spare- none of this 80,000 mile tire stuff- those suckers were going flat all the time, and you were lucky to get 20,000 miles out of them.