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This thing was started by GM bragging about some piddling "weight reduction" on the Cruze- a small car that weighs half a Ton more than mine. Then I said my old 5 passenger car does have good safety features, including air bag- more than adequate in my book- so it is odd to think that if we want better performance including fe performance, we are saddled with an extra 1,000 It was 3500 lbs or so right? Oh- it was 32xx then the engineering miracles took about 200 out. The point wasn't primarily about Tempos, it's primarily about new cars being excessively heavy. Regardless, just about everything sub-compact and up weighs 3000 or more these days.
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There is something to this: it's the size to weight to interior space ratio. As the car makers submit to mandated safety standards they need to add more equipment - and that adds extra weight. Weight is the enemy of fuel economy.
Case in point: My '09 Aveo weighs about the same as as my '89 Mitsu Galant. The Galant has a bigger engine, (2 liter vs. 1.6), has much better acceleration, is a much larger vehicle and gets the same MPG in local driving as the much smaller Aveo. The old Galant has no airbags. The Aveo has very little storage space in the driver and passenger seating area. If I could have bought a brand new '89 Galant in 2009 I would have, rather than the Aveo.
Mandated safety items make a vehicle heavier and interior room is sacrificed. In the process the trend is often to make the vehicle
itself much larger (usually wider and taller) to compensate for the loss of space inside it. (Most SUV's are huge, but you can't put much cargo in them.) The result is having more big, bulky vehicles on the road that are less maneuverable. And of course we will need even more safety equipment on the newer, smaller cars to protect us from the bigger, bulkier cars... etc., etc. in a vicious cycle.