Twenty-something years ago, when I had just started out in newspapers, I'd sometimes wait by the loading docks at the end of the presses for my fresh, hot copy of the next day's paper. Waiting alongside me would be the legion of delivery drivers who had to get bundles of papers to far-flung general stores all over our rural county, and they largely chose Geo Metros to drive on their rounds. One would've thought the paper simply had a fleet of the fuel-sipping subcompacts, but no, those drivers had to use their own transportation for the job, so they rabidly sought out Metros and bought up every single one of them that ever came up for sale in southwestern Oregon.

I know, because I too thought a slightly used Metro would've been ideal for a cub reporter often on the road to attend bridge openings and city council meetings, but invariably every time I called on a Metro in the local classifieds, I found it had already been snatched up, only to see it among the delivery drivers the next day. It got to the point that I stopped looking for Metros and never again started looking. Or, at least, not until McCourt chose that yellow convertible Metro for a Hemmings Find of the Day this past week, dredging up all those memories of never actually finding something that I'd expected to be easy to track down.

Which made me wonder, what other vehicles out there would you expect your local classifieds or even Hemmings to be littered with, but have become, for whatever reason, incredibly scarce? What vehicles has rust utterly eliminated? Which ones haven't you (or likely anybody else) thought of for years? Which ones have become so unloved owners seem more inclined to send to the junkyard than try to sell? Which ones seem destined to LeMons or Gambler infamy?