Summer 1999, New Haven, CT, out with friends at BAR. The weather was warm already, so they had the "garage doors" at the front open to the sidewalk & street. I'm chatting up some chick, when I sensed a disturbance in the Force. I looked up, and a sweet, shiny Proton rolls down Chapel Street, nice and slow. I knew what it was from the previews in Car & Driver, and I just sort of stumbled toward it in a daze. The VX disappeared down the street, the chick gets all pissed off at me for ignoring her right in the middle of some story she was telling, so she disappears, too. But I couldn't have been happier. :-)

I saw one on a dealer's lot a couple of weeks later, but was surprised to see that it was even more expensive than C&D had estimated (the supposed "optional" CD changer became standard for US-bound VX's). I couldn't afford one new, that was for sure, but I knew I would have one eventually...