Well I'm happy to say that after 8 months of driving around with my spare tire behind the back seat, I finally go around to installing the new tire hoist to replace the factory hoist with the horrible, awful, stupid, idiotic, who the F**K designed this! "secondary latch" mechanism:
Here's the side by side of the old and new. As you can see I had to use an angle grinder to cut one end off the "bell" holding the tire in place because no matter what I did I could NOT get the secondary latch to release:
Another side x side photo. The replacement part was bought off of Amazon.com. Cost was around $109. I know I could have gotten one from a junkyard for less but I wanted something brand new.
and here she is with the spare all snug and in place! I don't know what I'm going to do with all that space now. Oh, wait, camping season is over so my 3rd row will go back in.
Now I just have the old hoist w/secondary latch left over. Hmm, should I just chuck it in the trash, or should I find a blast furnace so I can consign it to the fiery pits of HELL from whence it came?
BTW if anyone is thinking of replacing this part, let me just say it's stupid easy. Basically I had to use a long handled screwdriver to remove the plastic tube (that "guides" the jack handle into the hoist) and slide it towards the rear, and once that's out of the way it's literally ONE 15mm bolt, pull it out, put the new one in, bolt it in place and snap the tube back on.
Took me like 20 minutes and most of that time was me trying to figure out how to slide that tube out of the way so I could get to the bolt. Once I had that it was less than 5 minutes.