Why you can't buy a high mpg car....

[LeanBurn]

What about the Toyota Tercel and Nissan Micra?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Vman455

Because the Japanese are all building big, bigger, and even bigger cars? When it first came here, the Honda Accord was 171.9" long, 63.8" wide, 53.3" high. Today, the Accord is 194.9" long, 72.7" wide, and 58.1" high.

Sure, but you do know that Honda still makes & sells cars smaller than the Accord, don't you? Honda (and other imports) got their foothold in the US market by serving the small car segment that the US automakers were ignoring. That might be - at a guess - 25% of the total market. Once the imports saturated that segment (and were competing amongst themselves for shares of it), they could gain more sales by building larger models as well. That didn't mean that the small car segment went away: it meant that they were taking a share of the mid-size market segment away from Detroit.

[niky]

The imports got their foothold because of several factors. Yes... they made small cars, but so did the domestics. The big difference was that the domestics made truly, incredibly horrible small cars compared to the imports... and imports were cheap (thanks to the undervalued yen). Add to the fact that Japanese companies were well-versed in making small displacement cars, where domestics saw anything below 3 liters as "small enough", and you had a recipe for disaster in the making for the domestics during each and every gas crisis that followed. People would still buy more domestics, even during periods of high gas prices, but they would be buying their lower-end models... which would then put off those buyers from either: 1. Buying more from the brand or 2. Buying another small car.

After gas-crisis induced purchases, the higher build quality hooked buyers, who then went on to buy more of the same for the next three to four decades, but sometimes in a bigger size. Imports didn't gain a lion's share of the market overnight. They gained it by consistently giving people good cars, whatever the price point. This is the same reason Hyundai and Kia are gaining so much market share. They make incredibly cheap cars with decent quality... and that means they are gaining market share over the (now more expensive) Japanese.

Small cars are only important to manufacturers in the US because they're entry-level "hooks" for some buyers... not because they sell them in high volume.

But... you can't exist on small cars alone. In a market where the top-selling car (not truck) is the absolute biggest car Toyota sells in most other markets (the Camry), then focusing simply on small cars (like, say, Suzuki does), is a death sentence.

-----

Side note:

The Honda Fit was originally merely the same size as, say, a mid-90's civic. The current Fit is nearly the same size as the ES-EP Civic inside, and is correspondingly heavier than the previous generation.

The Honda Civic is now, with the FB body, even bigger than the already big ES-FD generations... which are old Accord-sized. It's so big that Honda has discontinued it in Japan due to lagging sales. Sales are lagging because it's just too big for your typical Japanese urban commuter, who is better served by the cheaper Fit or Fit hybrid.

The Honda Brio is Honda's truly "small" car, and it won't make it to the US. The US subsidiaries of car companies have a hard time selling truly small cars in the US, unless they're sold as fashion accessories (MINI, SMART, Fiat 500). Chevy has been promising the Spark for years... and it's been pushed to 2013 or 2014. Hyundai, Suzuki and Kia already sell cars that get 60 mpg, meet EuroNCAP crash requirements and cost peanuts, none have any plans of going stateside, because they know they won't sell in big enough numbers to make it worth the trouble, especially considering the marginal profit margins you get on such cheap cars.

Selling just a few thousand i10s at a minimal profit margin through a nationwide network of dealers compared to just a few hundred Genesis sedans at a bigger profit margin? No brainer. Just moving the i10s around the country would represent a loss for the company!

Guys like us wouldn't bat an eyelash at buying a small, small-displacement car with a manual transmission that gets 60 mpg. In fact, we'd be ecstatic if we could. But most consumers value something besides fuel economy. Without any impetus to steer them towards economy... like... say... a fuel crisis... like in 2008 where buyers across the board went down one or two size segments in brand new purchases... then there's nothing you can do about it. And once the crisis passes, or once people get used to paying more for gas, they go back to buying bigger vehicles.

The same holds true elsewhere. In other countries, people buy smaller, more economical cars only because taxes push them to do so. In fact, most people motorbike. But when people get more prosperous, they migrate up the automotive ladder as high as they can... which is why the Tata Nano's sales are dismal compared to bigger, more "car-like" cars

[jtbo]

Trend has been bigger exterior and smaller interior for a while, that is also why I prefer older vehicles, less forehead for same room inside.

Visibility is also better as is estimation of corners, that matters here as parking boxes are still painted at 70's size and then most of our cars were something that in US might been called supermini.

When I had Pontiac STW, I usually took two boxes as car was so much longer than those parking boxes, had to pay from two when staying at hotel and it did require more than 3 point turns at tiny underground hotel parking lots, so here this modern trend of making cars bigger outside and smaller from inside is issue in many ways.

If it would be possible to put that modern motor technology to pre 2000 vehicles it would probably make hugely economical vehicle, especially with aero mods, but all that is of course illegal or very very expensive.

Moden Nissan Micra is silly size, it is very tiny inside, hard to fit anything in it, same goes to Yaris, but at outside they are larger than my hobby car, but my hobby car fits 5 adults comfortably and their luggage, while in Yaris you don't fit 5 people comfortably and with 4 people you can't fit groceries or anything else to car, still it is very wide an tall vehicle with large cross section which means lot of drag naturally.

I don't understand very well why small car is made to look big and sometimes big with small interior as main point of having small car is that it would be small, easy to park and still has relatively good room.

Geo Metro has probably lot more usable room than new Micra, but I think new Micra is bigger and a lot heavier.

S80 Volvo and XC90 Volvo are especially good examples, I hit my head to door frame in those, feel cramped and when I unload work equipment from my car's trunk to either of those it becomes clear that my medium size car has more usable space in trunk than such large family car or SUV, that sounds insane, but that is what I have found out.

One silly thing is that new Ford Focus has more space at front seat than S80 Volvo, they are completely different class cars, it really should not be so, but it is.

I think that is something where car makers could gain advantage over other car makers, by actually giving car decent usable interior space instead of today standard trend of small interior with big roundy shapes that look stupid and steal lot of interior space, I mean who really needs plastic covering in trunk that takes 20cm from each side just to make it look pretty? That is total insanity, ridiculous or something,

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by euromodder

And the Porsche Spyder.
The basic compact cars that we get in Europe (and that still are basic and compact) often come with manual windows.



Its electrically assisted.

Well, you Europeans know how to do a true "economy" car. Fairly sure I have not seen a car in the US with roll up windows for a while.

And why did you respond to my comment about manual steering rack? I said manual steering rack would be awesome, not that any car had it. IIRC Lotus Elise has manual steering btw, maybe they changed it recently.

[jtbo]

I have read that many cars are having now electrical assisted steering, which more or less is not assisted at highway speed, it is mostly parking aid. Maybe they have put in system where assist comes on when you turn wheel quickly while braking, they put clever things to cars these days.

That old fashion hydraulic assists is probably dying in near future.

VW has even system that parks car automatically, turns wheel and all that, you just press the button or something like that, fancy things that electrical steering assists makes possible, maybe bit too fancy.

Anyway, electrical assist, I think in almost all cars is such that it is not assisting very much at speed and it does not take much of any juice, so that is probably ok equipment.

[Vman455]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Sure, but you do know that Honda still makes & sells cars smaller than the Accord, don't you? Honda (and other imports) got their foothold in the US market by serving the small car segment that the US automakers were ignoring. That might be - at a guess - 25% of the total market. Once the imports saturated that segment (and were competing amongst themselves for shares of it), they could gain more sales by building larger models as well. That didn't mean that the small car segment went away: it meant that they were taking a share of the mid-size market segment away from Detroit.

Of course--and you do know that so do the Big Three, and have for decades, don't you? My point was that, regardless of how the Japanese manufacturers entered the market here 50+ years ago, their once-small cars have grown just as much (if not more) than domestic vehicles, reflecting the trend of Americans and the world in general wanting "big, bigger, and even bigger" cars when these cars have more physical problems to overcome in order to get decent fuel economy.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by niky

The imports got their foothold because of several factors. Yes... they made small cars, but so did the domestics.

When? Start from the late '50s-early '60s period, when the VW Beetle was first imported: what small cars did the domestic automakers produce? The Corvair (which wasn't all that small), and the Corvette/'57 T-Bird, which were aimed at a different market segment.

Then in the '70s the domestics produced some mid-sized cars like the Ford Pinto & Chevy Vega, which did fit your "truly, incredibly horrible... compared to the imports" description, but they were small only in comparison to the "ull-sized" domestics. The imports were all much smaller. That continued to be the case, as I recall, until the Geo Metro was introduced - and it was just a re-badged import.

But... you can't exist on small cars alone. In a market where the top-selling car (not truck) is the absolute biggest car Toyota sells in most other markets (the Camry), then focusing simply on small cars (like, say, Suzuki does), is a death sentence.

Hadn't noticed Suzuki going bankrupt. Did I miss something?

However, I don't think I suggested that (non-specialty) manufacturers could exist on small cars alone. That's why the imports widen their brand by producing mid-size models as well. But I think recent history has proven that the converse is also true, and that manufacturers can't exist on big cars (plus SUVs & trucks) alone either, at least absent multiple billions in government life support.

[/QUOTE]The Honda Fit was originally merely the same size as, say, a mid-90's civic. The current Fit is nearly the same size as the ES-EP Civic inside, and is correspondingly heavier than the previous generation.[/QUOTE]

How much of that is by Honda's choice, though? Lots of design decisions are dictated by government regulations.

The US subsidiaries of car companies have a hard time selling truly small cars in the US, unless they're sold as fashion accessories (MINI, SMART, Fiat 500).

But those small cars do sell, don't they? I know I see Minis all over the place.

Selling just a few thousand i10s at a minimal profit margin through a nationwide network of dealers compared to just a few hundred Genesis sedans at a bigger profit margin? No brainer.

'Cept it's not either/or. It's a case of selling the few hundred larger models PLUS the few thousand small ones. So what if profit on the smaller ones is minimal? You still have your dealers paying for buildings, staff, etc while waiting around to make their one daily sale of a large car. They might as well sell small ones as spend the time playing solitaire :-)

[jtbo]

I remember talking to one quite average consumer and there he did say from one car how he likes that it looks like bigger than it really is, I lost words, couldn't reply anything to that, it was like saying mud is nice on shoe.

[Frank Lee]

Reminds me of the mid-70s Thunderbird, a car with enough sheet metal in the hood alone to build a complete VW while having woefully inadequate interior room/comfort on par with a Rabbit pickup (in other words, you basically can't even get in the thing if you are tall).