[niky]

Blame the consumers.

A Rio 1.1 CRDi would be wonderful. But American consumers won't buy such a "slow" car.

Note the Scion xB. Not the greatest aerodynamics, but the car was beloved by many as it gave a combination of great space and good fuel efficiency. Typical complaint? Not enough power. Solution? Replace the car with a bloated, overweight second-generation model with a honking big 2.4 liter engine (replacing the perfectly adequate 1.5 in the previous car) because the typical buyer wants a car that will do 100 mph for hours on end or 80 mph going up a grade while carrying two kegs of beer and towing a small house.

I've talked to buyers who won't buy a Fit because it's slow. A Fit that hits the benchmark 60 mph as quickly as bigger cars with twice the engine. But since it's a measly 1.5 liters, it must be slow, in their minds.

Manufacturers actually have to con people into buying small engined cars by giving them big headline figures... Hyundai is now pushing "138 hp" 1.6s that don't perform much better than their "128 hp" counterparts in other countries... Downsized turbocharged engines have to match the top-end power of bigger competitors... which compromises turbo design, even with variable geometry turbos... as it forces them to use a secondary (vanes open) configuration that sacrifices mid-range flexibility for top-end... because customers can't fathom how a turbocharged downsized engine with less on-paper horsepower can actually outperform a bigger naturally aspirated engine in day-to-day part throttle driving... especially if it's diesel.

It's all coming to a head. In order to meet American expectations for power while still meeting fuel economy regulations, manufacturers are increasingly relying on electronic gimmickry that severely hamstrings engine power at lower revs so they hit the sweet numbers on the EPA test, while boosting power at full throttle so they hit even sweeter numbers on the Car&Driver test. Producing engines that are schizophrenic, laggy and generally not quite as nice to drive as "less economical" engines.

I don't want a gigantic hole in the powerband at 4000 rpm just because some soccer mom deems 80 mph in 6th gear a proper cruising speed. I do all my cruising at sane engine speeds and all my overtaking at 4k rpm.