For those of you who even have a compact spare:
Check the pressure in it. The Buick dealer's pre-printed 172-point checklist sheet mentions the other tires, but not the spare. Just now I unpacked the trunk, levered up the floor panel, and gauge-checked my spare. It was 18.5 psi, and it's supposed to be 60! My Sears inflator was getting a little hot by the time I finished pumping 48 pounds into the tire.
'Twould be embarrassing, to say the least, if I got a flat on the road somewhere, unshipped the spare, and found it dead flabby, no? (Yes, I have a can of the Fix-a-Flat stuff . . . but I've never used it. Ounce, prevention, cure, you know the drill.)
I will give Buick/Opel full credit: The spare is stowed with the valve uppermost, so you don't have to take the tire out and flip it over to check the pressure. I had to do that every year on the Park Avenue; annoying, to say the least. . . .