Using SPI Nor Flash as storage memory in Vehical tracker device
Data Storage is the most common use of these SPI flash parts. As with all types of flash, you need to assess the number of erase cycles and the expected life-span of the device with respect to your own application requirements. When the raw part does not meet your requirements for erase cycles you can look at topics such as wear leveling.

In general, these parts are usually OK to use for data storage.

Edit

The reference you quoted is a 14 year old document that specifically compares parallel NOR, parallel NAND flash and DiskOnChip memory. The purpose of the document is to show how bad NAND and NOR flash is, and how wonderful DiskOnChip is. Since it is written by the makers of DiskOnChip it has to be considered to be rather biased. The statement that it makes "...disqualifying it from being used as a data storage device" is a very biased opinion. In the context of this discussion it is irrelevant anyway because you said you planned on using SPI NOR flash.

Many engineers (me included) have used SPI NOR flash for data storage. Whether it is suitable for your application only you know. But being able to program a 256 byte page in 0.8ms is sometimes fast enough.