Whatever happened to the Chevrolet Chevette?

On the way in to work this morning, I got behind a Chevy Chevette. I hadn't seen of those in a while. Lucky for me, traffic was sparse, so I spent some time thinking about cars that used to be all over the road but are gone now.

The Chevy Vega. The Ford Pinto. The AMC Gremlin, Matador and Pacer. The Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon. The Ford Maverick. The Dodge Dart. The Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare. The Ford Mustang II. You know, the cars that drove loyal American consumers to Honda, Toyota and Nissan.

I don't know if "Pimp My Ride" has ever touched a Chevette, Vega, Gremlin or Maverick, or would even want to.

My dream car is still a new Ford Mustang. Maybe after the kids are grown.

On a related topic, we were on U.S. 60 a few months ago and saw a Porsche 924 with a "for sale" sign on it. I stopped and looked at it. When I got out of college, I really wanted one of those bad. A few years later, a friend who had one let me drive it a few miles. Thrill for thrill, it wasn't any better than my much less expensive VW Scirocco, and less than what my 1986 VW GTI would be.

But I still want that Mustang. Or a new GTI. Whichever one I can get for free.