...most small airports had a beater car with the keys in it. You just borrow it to go into town and replace the gas. I haven't seen that in more developed areas.
Have you looked at an AOPA Airport Directory in the past 5 years? Is Corona, CA "developed" enough? They have a courtesy car and van. How about Hawthorne, CA? They've got a courtesy car, too. And it's not just California. There are a *TON* of places that have courtesy cars. Most of the fields I've flown into still have them and while the number of Class E & G airports is going down, there are still a lot of them left and the majority of them have courtesy cars.
Your other points are well taken. If you live in a large, urban area and you're foolish enough to hangar your piston aircraft at a controlled field, then yeah, GA can suck. More precisely, all the controls the FAA has come up with "to keep us safe" suck and they're going to get worse. I'm absolutely convinced that the FAA/DHS duo from hell will not be happy until there is no more uncontrolled flight in the entire country.
I'm going to read the article Ashton wrote now, but Boyer's quote above is on mark in my view. Saturday and Sunday was beautiful up here. Where'd I spend Saturday? 6am - 4pm daughter's tennis tournament I hauled food and water for. 4pm-4:30pm take a daughter to work, 5pm-8pm running around with the other daughter. Sunday, 9am-10am polish the airplane. 10:30-4pm tennis with daughter again, 4:25pm - 6pm, took daughter to the mall to buy shoes for her prom. Got home at 7:30pm. So much for those 2 VFR days and that is exactly for the reason Boyer said. Wife was working nights Fri-Sun and was sleeping during the day, which left me to haul kids around. For me, I have *way* more weekends like the last one than I do free. And that definitely cuts into my flying.