I am the opposite, I always had a car, however only use it on weekends to get away from the city. I used to live in south Bucharest (Berceni area) and work in the north (Pipera) so I could see no sense to cross the city by car. I did cycle through, funny being that was highly unpopular at that time and people looked at me as a funny specimen from another world. Now I know is actually quite easy to cross the city via bicycle as there are some sort of cycling highways that I believe makes the city much more lovely than it was :)
Oh, I hear drivers still have a lot of hate for cyclists, for some reason, though yeah, it's definitely more commonplace now. Although here, we're still quite a way away from having a fully cycling-friendly Bucharest :/
Yeah, now that you mention it, getting away from the city is probably the only thing I'd like to have a car for :)