I've said it before and I'll say it again: the spare tire is going the way of the hand-crank window, and I don't like it one bit. Somebody at DaxStreet put together a list of 10 modern vehicles that still ship with a full-size spare and an actual jack, and I read the whole thing nodding like a bobblehead on a washboard road.

Here's the deal for anybody who hasn't thought about it. Plenty of new cars come with a tire repair kit instead of a spare, a little compressor and a bottle of goop, and DaxStreet's own intro points at exactly that problem: a flat turns into a major inconvenience when your rig shows up with only an emergency kit. That goop works fine if you pick up a nail on Main Street. But if you tear a sidewall on a gravel road twenty miles from anywhere, that kit is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. You're calling a tow truck, and out where I grew up, that tow truck might be two hours out.

A full-size spare means you swap the tire, tighten the lugs, and keep rolling. At highway speed, even. No limping along at 50 with your hazards blinking, no hoping the patch holds until the next town. And a real jack means you're not kneeling in the ditch trying to figure out where the factory scissor jack actually goes, because half of those things feel like they're made out of recycled beer cans.

Now, I'll grant that most folks never touch their spare. They trade the car in before the tires wear out. But the whole point of preparing for the bad day is that you only need it on the bad day. I keep a come-along, a tow strap, a tire plug kit and a 12-volt compressor behind the seat of my truck at all times, and I've gone years without needing any of it. Then one February night on a frozen county road I needed all of it at once. That's just how it goes.

One thing worth checking even if your rig made the list: that spare loses air sitting there doing nothing. Go out to the driveway this weekend, pull the cover off, check the pressure and make sure the jack and the lug wrench are actually in there. I've opened up more than one trunk to find an empty well where the spare used to be, previous owner kept it, I guess. Takes five minutes and it'll save you a very long evening someday.

Go read the full list at the link and see if your daily driver made the cut. If it didn't, a good donut spare from the junkyard beats a bottle of goop every single time. I know because I've done it both ways.