‘Why don’t modern cars have a spare wheel?’

“I have a two-year-old Suzuki Swift. Last Monday I drove my tire into the sidewalk: broken. To my surprise, the car turned out to have no spare wheel and I had to be towed to the garage’, writes reader Janny van Oostaijen-Methorst in the weekly question & answer section of our car editors. “Modern cars don’t seem to have a spare tire anymore. Why is that?’