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I saw a first generation Honda City on the roads the other day, kinda like the one in the picture above. Judging from the license plate, it looks like it was registered around 1997 or 1998, there or thereabouts. You may think, so what? And normally I would too. But it caught my eye that day because I suddenly realised that, in Singapore, cars of that era are rapidly disappearing from our streets now. Lots of these cars, from the period of between 1996 to 1999, have ended up as the victims of the COE "flood" of the past few years, as they ended up bound for the scrapyard once their 10 year "lease" is up, and their owners took the opportunity to get a brand new car. Aside from the City, other previously popular cars that have met the same fate include the Corollas, Civics and Lancers from that era. Remember this one? And the Liftback version with its crazy rounded lights? The once ubiquitous Lancer, with its triangular taillamps that drew comparasion with the Mercedes-Benz C-Class of that period, is also pretty much gone now. The EK Civic, with its bug-eyed headlamps, is also getting increasingly rare, although it has fared slightly better in terms of survival thanks to the "tunability" of its VTEC engine. It just feels like such a shame that cars like these, which used to populate our roads in great numbers just over a decade ago, have now been relegated to endangered species status. Don't you think so?