Yes, I did.  And J-a-g-u-a-r is also pronounced "ford" (rhymes with gourd).

You're remarkably close.

It was an old junker plodding up the right lane of 17 just outside
of Los Gatos, heading toward Sant Cruz.  I went by too fast to get
a good look at what was inside of it or who was driving it.

Incidentally, I mentioned in a previous post that the Aspen/Volare
was an outgrowth of the Dart/Valiant.  When I first started driving
in the Seventies, I learned to avoid getting behind all of those
cars because they were often driven Slothfully -- even when they
weren't being driven by old people, which was often the case. (Back
then oldsters had a noticeable preference for Chrysler products --
compacts, full-size sedans, you name it.  The current crop of
crumblies seems to prefer Buicks.)  

I've had occasion to drive the odd Dart or Valiant over the years
(and have ridden in a Volare), and even when equipped with the
Slant 6, they weren't underpowered.  That was the origin of my
theory that certain cars either have a psychological effect on
people that causes them to drive like roadslugs and get underfoot.
Or more likely, they attract the sort of buyers who already have
that sort of driving style.

Some are more obvious than others, of course.  Volvo, for example,
markets its cars primarily to the sort of people who are terrified
of driving.  And Priuses are fashion accessories for tree huggers
who drive slowly  in order to conserve fuel and save Mudda Oit'.

Others are less so.  The Toyota Camry, for example, is _de rigeur_
among Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area -- a group that, to put it
mildly, isn't typically associated with brisk driving.  Minivans, of
course, are Mommy-mobiles, and women are passive, pokey-assed drivers
far more often than not.  I find that the Mazda MPV tends to be in the
way even more often than minivans in general, and I avoid getting behind
the things when I can.

Geoff

Well, now you go forth, sadder but wiser.  If a long hood and
short rear deck were all there was to it, the contemporary
Thunderbird would've qualified as a pony car, and it obviously
wasn't.

Think about it.  The Mustang, and the Camaro and Firebird (and
obviously, the Cougar) which followed it a few years later, are
the cars that established the "pony car" format.  In fact, "pony"
doesn't just imply small size (as in "pony keg" or "pony league");
it also alludes to the Mustang.  

The original Barracuda, the one with that big, wraparound back
window, was just a low-budget modification of the existing Valiant.
I wouldn't call it definitive in any way.

And the Challenger and second-generation Barracuda, coming onto the
scene late, can't be said to be definitive, either.  They were
aimed at the sporty, youth-oriented market, but were actually
closer in concept to intermediates like the Plymouth Road Runner
and AMC Rebel Machine than to the Mustang and F-body.

Geoff