Another car, another saga involving spare tires...
The Mark VI R and the Mark VII GTI both come with a spare, as do the Mark VII Rs in the rest of the world. So it's omission in the US is puzzling, but fortunately also fixable.
Also fortunate--some of the fanatics over on Vortex have already figured all of this out.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthrea...150519?page=68
This list is both incredibly helpful and certifiably insane.
So I ordered some parts from the Latvian website referenced in the post. We'll see what I get.