Reply #25: As a 1979 VW Diesel Rabbit owner, I agree with you personally [View All]

However, it's not you or me they have to worry about.

There's a reason they called them econoboxes back then. There are millions upon millions of people who cannot or will not buy a car like that because it doesn't meet their family or business needs. Meanwhile, in the intervening decades, emissions standards have gotten drastically more stringent, and crashworthiness has become a major concern. Much as I loved my Rabbit, it could not be sold these days.

Engineering is the art of making trade-offs. In the case of small car design, you have three major engineering foci that are mutually destructive:

1. High gas mileage

2. Low emissions

3. Performance

Maximizing any one of these requires compromising the others. Because of the laws of thermodynamics, and the physical restrictions of volumetric efficiency, you can't maximize them all. So take your pick, but your pick is not likely to be everyone else's pick. As long as we don't have a Soviet-style economy, people are going to buy what *they* want, not what someone else wants. Trying to force choice by fiat (no pun intended) has a long history of producing unintended consequences and unforeseen workarounds...and bankrupt companies.