>>17645
I can't remember if another anon brought it up in a different thread, but for whatever reason, Americans never truly
got the idea of the small car. Or small vehicle in general. Trucks, vans (though the Hijet did sell in some quantity), you name it, it has to be fuckhuge and have an engine that would make zero sense in any other economy. And when they seemed to get it, they viewed the cars as "temporary", in between their usual gas-hogging luxobarge.
In the beginning, landyachts made sense. The country was big, the roads were large and deserted, and you needed to travel far distances in comfort. Not to mention you could fill up several jerry cans worth of fuel for pennies on the dollar. Then the oil crisis hit, and carbuyers panicked. And though a few looked to Europe or Japan (some already did; the Beetle was immensely popular in the 60s), most continued to remain loyal to the Big Three (then Big Four) throughout the malaise era. And the "small" cars they produced were all fucking jokes.
From the Pacer and Gremlin to Chrysler's K-Cars; they all fucking sucked. Ford took Europe's Fiesta after the catastrophic failure of the Pinto and bolted on a comically sized federal bumper. Chevrolet had the woeful Chevette which the UK's Vauxhall was able to turn into a semi-decent runabout. Dodge just slapped the pentastar onto a Mitsubishi and didn't even try until the Omni.
And when they got the Renault 5, that was about how many years its chances of survival in the US market had dropped to zero from a much higher number. Though federalization played its part, the car needed to launch around the same time as it did in Europe; 1972 or thereabouts. By 1976 Americans were buying sedans and muscle cars again, just with castrated engines.
In the late 1980s, the smallest Ford you could buy was the Festiva. Not even 10 years later it had become the Escort, a car that would be considered midsize from a European perspective. They never got the Ka, nor any Fiesta outside of the Mk1. They did get the Focus, though they skipped the Mk2 model entirely, and though the Mondeo conquered Europe, the Contour flopped hard. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the smallest car you could've bought new in the US was at one time a Daewoo.