The added height also does a lot to make it look bigger. My Cherokee looked fairly big, even though it was only 166" long, shorter than an Accord of the time.
Now an accord is longer then 75% of the Land Rovers I sell.
And I thought Honda would resist the bloat factor...kind of like the houses getting bigger. No surprise we use more electricity/gas to heat/ac, when they're all bigger, just like the fleet mileage not changing for 20 years as the cars get bigger/heavier/faster. At least the computers are keeping us even! Does make for a big window for what we now call subcompacts. No one would look at something the size of an original Civic these days.
edit - well, we'll see if Smart can do it :confuse:
but just looking at pics, I think the Mini looks bigger. I think it's because it's more low-slung than the xA, and seems to have a longer hood. Like the Honda Fit, the xA is starting to blur the distinction between a car and a really tiny minivan.
The Mini's longer wheelbase probably helps it look sleeker and longer, too. Just going by those pics though, I wouldn't believe that the xA was 8-9 inches longer.
The Mini looks bigger because the greenhouse is notably narrower than the lower half of the car. GM uses the same trick on the Acadia to make it look larger on the outside.
Oh, an "optical delusion" as my mom used to say...
Well the height is the one thing you do notice...maybe the interior dimensions are smaller. The rear cargo area width certainly looks smaller in the MINI than it does in the xA. No way I'm getting the mountain bike in the back of the MINI without a cutting torch.
So yeah, 5 or so inches less in height, and inch or two in width, a buncha inches shorter, it all adds up for the human eye. When I look at a MINI I see in my brain a smaller car than my xA. When I see a SMART, I just laugh my head off and shake my head.
The smart "looks" tiny because it doesn't have the hood, trunk, and other stuff we expect to be on a car, even though the cabin is big enough to fit a mountain bike in the front seat.
Could be that it is just culturally unacceptable to us, that's true.
I've read where people hated early cars because the engines were under the floorboards. They could not see the "source" of the power. Once the engine went where the horses head used to be, they were fine with it.
So Smarts and Segways might just be too weird for the human brain and what it is used to.
Changing that sort of thing is done at one's peril. It's no accident that a modern bicycle looks a lot like a 100 year old bicycle, and all other attempts at a "new kind" of bicycle have been relegated to the curiosity shelf.
Maybe the best way to think of a Smart is a Segway without the disadvantages (weather, accessible path, only able to carry 1) rather than a small car...
modern bicycle looks a lot like a 100 year old bicycle
I haven't ridden a Penny Farthing since 1980 and haven't seen one for years. I never had an overwhelming desire to get a recumbent though - maybe it's that weirdness thing.
Now now I said 100 year old bicycles, not 150 year old bicycles. What a crazy invention the Penny Farthing was...I guess a few fatalities sorted that one out. This was pre-lawsuit I guess, when stupid people doing stupid things were given appropriate feedback.
Well, it did take ~50 years to figure out that putting a chain drive to the rear wheel was safer and more efficient. There's hope for cars - we just progress slower than we think we do. People probably won't buy a 3 wheel subcompact either, since it's not "normal." Even if one came out that was cheaper, more efficient, etc.
First let me state I am not saying the observation I have made is necsessarly a proper one or even reasonable but I thought I would share it anyway. As some may know I sold my Focus two weeks ago and got a GMC 2500. There is a idiom among truck people that says, " it is better to have more than you need than it is to need more than you have."
I have discovered that it is easy to dismiss people that have smaller vehicles with the words, "they only have."
When I had the smaller car and a larger one pulled in behind me the bigger vehicle could often dictate my speed. In other words I would most often speed up or evey now and then I would speed up and look for a place to pull over. Now I have noticed my driving style has changed and while it seems more relaxed I also determine my reaction to following vehicles based on their size. Another truck might get my attention but I am not concerned with how closely the smaller car follows me. Even when I pull into a parking lot I might look at the truck next to me and say, it is only a 1500. A Tacoma has become just another little truck.
I know, the attitude is dismissive but it amazed me how quickly I noticed the feeling I had now that I am one of the big boys on the block again. I feel like I have moved out of a private plane into a commercial transport. Yesterday we had a mild Santa Ana condition and I have been used to feeling the wind trying to move me from one lane into the next but I hardly noticed anything with the big heavy truck. I couldn't even feel the rain groves on the freeway last week.
I will say again, I am not saying it is the right way to feel but it is easy to fall into the mindset that dismisses any vehicle that is smaller than you vehicle.
I think your post is more representative of "whats wrong with people" than with "whats wrong with subcompacts". There has been no time when a behemoth behind me has managed to dictate my speed and driving. The only time I "worry" about someone following me is if they will be able to stop in time but that is true regardless of the size. So when I do brake in traffic, especially in rain, I keep some distance between the car in front and the vehicle behind me. I force the person behind me to start braking early.
Interestingly enough, I did get a slight bump by a lady a few years ago. She was driving an F250, the road was slippery, I was doing my thing and she was trying her best to stop (what looked like her little frame was standing on the brakes without much impact). I had run out of space between the car in front and mine, and she just touched my car's bumper. We pulled over, and there was no scratch.
I don't see a point to getting intimidated by SUVs and pickups in the rear view mirror.
There's so much wealth floating around (or credit as the case may be) that really the impact of a "nice big car" is totally lost on me anymore. I no more look at a Mercedes or BMW or Cadillac than I do a flatbed truck (WELL, depending on who's driving of course :P ).
As for intimidation, I'm in my own world when I'm driving. Short of spotting some highly aggressive or dangerous maneuver, I'm not projecting attitudes or emotions on other drivers based on what they drive.
Well, okay, someone driving in a Prius at 42 mph while wearing a big straw hat....yeah...I'm projecting onto that car....also speeding away from it, hopefully.
If I get a pickup truck, I'm going to install a gun rack and put a big pink umbrella in it :P
I no more look at a Mercedes or BMW or Cadillac than I do a flatbed truck (WELL, depending on who's driving of course ).
Y'know, it's funny you'd say that. Tonite, coming back from Costco, we saw this ancient dude in a Mercedes CLS500, or whatever it is they call that low-slung, coupe-looking 4-door thing. Didn't impress me in the least. If anything, I thought it was laughable. Now I could be totally off-base, but the perception it gave me was just some old dude trying to flaunt his wealth/credit, and attempting to appear "youthful" or "important", and probably overcompensating for the fact that he'd probably he'd probably have to mix his viagra with some heart attack-inducing drugs to relive his youthful days!
Now, maybe he was some well-off old man, at the point where buying that Benz was like me buying a $500 beater. But then, maybe not, who knows? All I know is that I wasn't impressed any more by that than by these kids who put these blingy $3000 rims on a $500 Caprice. He was driving really erratically, too, lane hopping all over the place but not really getting ahead anywhere.
In some ways it kinda made me sad, too, that here he was, probably in his 80's (or a really rough-life 70s), and driving around in a car like that. It made me think of the old adage about you youth is wasted on the young, and retirement is wasted on the old, or something like that.
It also made me wonder though, if the truly rich often suffer discrimination like that? Where us mere mortals see them driving around in those fancy cars and think they're trying to show off, when they're actually simply so well off that even with something like this Benz I saw, they're still living well below their means?
It's funny, but the older I get, and the more financially stable I become, I find that I want to spend as little as possible on a car.
Well I would hope there is some rationale for their purchase, whether it be "safety" or "I must impress my clients" or "I need a big comfortable car right now". ANYTHING but "won't THIS make the neighbors jealous!"
I tried to pick a car that really fit my environment, needs, work, etc. If I lived in Canada, I bet I'd make another decision and in Florida and 85 years old, maybe yet another decision.
But for whizzing through traffic, sipping gas, hauling stuff around with multiple stops, low maintenance, reliability, competing for tight parking--- I obviously picked a practical "metro car for the man on the go". I could have bought my friend's pristine BMW 750iL for the same money (they don't change much year to year) and looked a lot richer but it would have been a really stupid choice for me (and a good one for my friend at the time).
"That was always a disadvantage with a hatch even in the early days. The back is an invitation for theft in the shopping malls. It tends to be a lot easier to break a window than to pop a trunk."
That generally is not an issue. Most "hatchbacks" have lids that cover from the back of the rear seats to the base of the back window creating a trunk. The only time you see into the trunk is if you remove the lid. In general, that is when you have a very large load. In such cases, you are generally going fairly directly from point A to point B and are not going to be sitting around in a shopping mall much. I guess if you really had to keep such a load in your vehicle, you could cover it up with a big blanket, but that might not avoid theft if the crooks decided to take the chance on the possibility of finding something worthwhile under the blanket.
The Chevy HHR and Malibu Maxx have "lids" which can be mounted low or high. If they are mounted low, you get a small hidden compartment under a flat floored bed. If you mount it high, then you get a really big trunk. But that is not implying that other manufacturers are not as good. I just happen to know those two products because I was looking at them recently.
Impressed or not you seemed to notice the car. How many other cars around him at the same time could you describe as well?
But to be honest the cars I notice the most fall into just a few examples. If the driver is driving differently from the rest of us, too fast too slow or changing lanes too much. I notice other vehicles just like the one I might be driving at the time. I notice flashy cars and exotic cars. I notice cars I dislike. My two least favorite vehicles on the road today are first generation xBs and Elements. Sometimes I notice VWs but only when they are out of the shop so that doesn't happen that often. :P
Impressed or not you seemed to notice the car. How many other cars around him at the same time could you describe as well?
Well honestly, I noticed him because he was driving like Cruella DeVille trying to run down a stray Dalmatian! If he was just going with the flow of traffic, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
I mean, I also noticed the limey green '77 LeSabre Custom sedan with the white vinyl top and the faded hood and trunk that passed by us on the way to the store. :P Oddly, the thing that draw my attention to it was that the decklid was peeling almost how those clearcoat cars tended to in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I've never seen a 70's car do that. I've seen them do other bad things, but this was a new one on me!
I usually tend to notice cars that are driving erratically, cars that are old, or cars that I happen to like (which are often old, anyway). Or, if it's something that's been discussed here on Edmund's, it may stick in my mind more when I see one on the road.
I may have to agree with robertsmx that the problem may not be sub compacts but rather the problem may be people. And that can be a harder problem to deal with. In this case it is north American consumers. It is like Shifty said, it runs in cycles. They introduce a sub compact and first it gets a few more ponies and then it gets bigger and soon they have to re-introduce a sub compact. But we have designed our highways and even our cities to allow for that. Fuel doesn't cost as much and we have the disposable income, some my say runaway credit, that allows us to supersize our vehicles as well as our homes.
Even Shifty has indicated his xA could use a few more ponies and that making it bigger when it became to xD made it almost perfect, and he like small cars. But our culture says if a little is good then more is better. we have developed this idea over 231 years and it isn't likely to change in the next 20. We would much rather spend research bucks on how to keep our vehicles bigger with more HP than to invest in small light weight cars. Scion should be a prime example of that when they added the larger engine to their smaller selling cars. The tC out sold the other two right out of the gate and it came with the bigger engine from day one.
The Compact has kept its place pretty well for the last few years but it isn't likely that the Sub Compact will become the standard for the American consumer in my lifetime. IMHO.
True, and because we are a capatilistic country it is more profitable to make you design with less compromises that the compitition even if it only one step at a time till you have to re-invent the design. That is not likely to chance anytime soon.
You know when I stop and think about it our whole culture seems to produce this cycle. When we are young or first married we tend to start out with a small apartment or house and one small car. As we become more successful we get a bigger car or a bigger place to stay. Through our most productive years we may get two cars and one is most likely a lot bigger than what we commute with. Once we retire we realize we don't need a three or four bedroom home on a half acre plot and we down size to a small home and maybe one car. But that seems to be the American way and most of the world would trade their lifestyle in a second for ours.
Nah, nah, I was linking pathological growth to the pathological growth of cars. I was still on topic (I think?)
I think we enjoy the myth of believing we are the best way to live because advertising has drummed that into our heads since we were infants. But direct observation suggests holes in that myth....that it's a partial reality. If we were so happy we wouldn't be so hungry and insatiable. A Yaris would be our limousine, gliding us around like kings on soft rubber tires, taking us wherever we wished to go at 75 mph for only pennies per mile. Why, it's like a magic carpet from fairy tales!
But NOOOOOO, we need seat heaters and NAV and little wipers for our headlights and a power tailgate of course, of course.
Do you still have the easter bunny visiting your house? A Yaris? But seriously all we have to do is wait and see how well the Smart car does. If it is a success maybe America is ready for a change. If not, it is the same time same station.
I go back and forth on the Smart. I think in towns like Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo it would be fine. No real weather to speak of, you don't need a freeway to go most places, and gas is incredibly expensive. And the towns are already high in the greenie scale as seen by the Prius-per-capita counts. That said, I personally would much rather have a Mini (or some older German vehicle that isn't practical for daily transportation in the "real" world).
Are you still thinking little cars are those crap cans from the early 90s?
I don't think things sucked that bad even back then. I spent a lot of time in SR20 powered Nissans (Sentra SE-R, NX2000, Infiniti G20) and they were a lot of fun. I also liked the CRX and Civic SI. Even the 323/Protege wasn't that bad of a ride. I think the mid-to-late 80s Toyota Tercel EZ turned a generation off from sub-compact cars.
How about Echos? Came home tonight at the same time as my neighbor, she is an empty-nester looking to replace her old minivan, liked the Echo a lot. She sat in it, liked what she saw and how it felt, and asked a whole bunch of questions, including what kind of mpg it gets (currently 41 as a running average). She is going to go investigate the Yaris as a result.
And she's not the first. I have had three or four similarly detailed inquiries in the last few months, and the most recent purchased a Yaris as a result. I'm convertin' 'em one buyer at a time! ;-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I spent three uncomfortable moments trying to get into the Yaris when it first came out. While I like the 2 door hatch model, the price difference and gas mileage were not compelling enough to choose it over the Corolla.
I don't know that the Escort was that unfavorable to the Corolla/Tercel of the time. I remember the early 80s Corollas deteriorating when exposed to sunlight. The Omni had some redeeming qualities because it could hold 4 people comfortable, and actually had a little room for stuff left over.
I think the Chevette was a very sad time, especially by the mid-80s when it was an 8 y/o design.
The Chevette was a very basic ecenomy no-frills vehicle. If you performed the preventative maintenance (oil changes, tire rotations, etc.), kept the car clean, etc., the car would pretty much last forever AND IT WAS CHEAP TO MAINTAIN. In rust free climates, like Vancouver, BC, there are still a good number of them around.
Personally, for a person who needs to get to work and back, I want a no-frills car that is cheap to maintain. I would like to own a similar vehicle without all of the fancy garbage (especially electronics) that run up the operating costs of the vehicle.
When I need a car for a long trip, the no-frills commuter car goes into the garage, and off I head to Hertz/Avis/Alamo and pick up a more comfortable drive.
I will agree that GM cheapened the car each and every model year and the 1986 version did not compare with the 1980 version.
I had an 82 Toyota Corolla Tercel for 17 years in snow country. There was a recall on rocker arms or something around the rear axles - they rusted badly. The rest of the body held up ok considering. Mechanically it was pretty terrific. The peppy little 5 speed made it fun to drive too.
Comments
And I thought Honda would resist the bloat factor...kind of like the houses getting bigger. No surprise we use more electricity/gas to heat/ac, when they're all bigger, just like the fleet mileage not changing for 20 years as the cars get bigger/heavier/faster. At least the computers are keeping us even! Does make for a big window for what we now call subcompacts. No one would look at something the size of an original Civic these days.
edit - well, we'll see if Smart can do it :confuse:
The Mini's longer wheelbase probably helps it look sleeker and longer, too. Just going by those pics though, I wouldn't believe that the xA was 8-9 inches longer.
Well the height is the one thing you do notice...maybe the interior dimensions are smaller. The rear cargo area width certainly looks smaller in the MINI than it does in the xA. No way I'm getting the mountain bike in the back of the MINI without a cutting torch.
So yeah, 5 or so inches less in height, and inch or two in width, a buncha inches shorter, it all adds up for the human eye. When I look at a MINI I see in my brain a smaller car than my xA. When I see a SMART, I just laugh my head off and shake my head.
I've read where people hated early cars because the engines were under the floorboards. They could not see the "source" of the power. Once the engine went where the horses head used to be, they were fine with it.
So Smarts and Segways might just be too weird for the human brain and what it is used to.
Changing that sort of thing is done at one's peril. It's no accident that a modern bicycle looks a lot like a 100 year old bicycle, and all other attempts at a "new kind" of bicycle have been relegated to the curiosity shelf.
I haven't ridden a Penny Farthing since 1980 and haven't seen one for years. I never had an overwhelming desire to get a recumbent though - maybe it's that weirdness thing.
Think these would sell? (230 mpg)
Aptera diesel-electric hybrid
Sure that would sell in the circus maybe or at a Las Vegas lobby display for the new Galactica Casino and Spa.
That is what we always did when we had a project like that.
I have discovered that it is easy to dismiss people that have smaller vehicles with the words, "they only have."
When I had the smaller car and a larger one pulled in behind me the bigger vehicle could often dictate my speed. In other words I would most often speed up or evey now and then I would speed up and look for a place to pull over. Now I have noticed my driving style has changed and while it seems more relaxed I also determine my reaction to following vehicles based on their size. Another truck might get my attention but I am not concerned with how closely the smaller car follows me. Even when I pull into a parking lot I might look at the truck next to me and say, it is only a 1500. A Tacoma has become just another little truck.
I know, the attitude is dismissive but it amazed me how quickly I noticed the feeling I had now that I am one of the big boys on the block again. I feel like I have moved out of a private plane into a commercial transport. Yesterday we had a mild Santa Ana condition and I have been used to feeling the wind trying to move me from one lane into the next but I hardly noticed anything with the big heavy truck. I couldn't even feel the rain groves on the freeway last week.
I will say again, I am not saying it is the right way to feel but it is easy to fall into the mindset that dismisses any vehicle that is smaller than you vehicle.
Interestingly enough, I did get a slight bump by a lady a few years ago. She was driving an F250, the road was slippery, I was doing my thing and she was trying her best to stop (what looked like her little frame was standing on the brakes without much impact). I had run out of space between the car in front and mine, and she just touched my car's bumper. We pulled over, and there was no scratch.
I don't see a point to getting intimidated by SUVs and pickups in the rear view mirror.
As for intimidation, I'm in my own world when I'm driving. Short of spotting some highly aggressive or dangerous maneuver, I'm not projecting attitudes or emotions on other drivers based on what they drive.
Well, okay, someone driving in a Prius at 42 mph while wearing a big straw hat....yeah...I'm projecting onto that car....also speeding away from it, hopefully.
If I get a pickup truck, I'm going to install a gun rack and put a big pink umbrella in it :P
Y'know, it's funny you'd say that. Tonite, coming back from Costco, we saw this ancient dude in a Mercedes CLS500, or whatever it is they call that low-slung, coupe-looking 4-door thing. Didn't impress me in the least. If anything, I thought it was laughable. Now I could be totally off-base, but the perception it gave me was just some old dude trying to flaunt his wealth/credit, and attempting to appear "youthful" or "important", and probably overcompensating for the fact that he'd probably he'd probably have to mix his viagra with some heart attack-inducing drugs to relive his youthful days!
Now, maybe he was some well-off old man, at the point where buying that Benz was like me buying a $500 beater. But then, maybe not, who knows? All I know is that I wasn't impressed any more by that than by these kids who put these blingy $3000 rims on a $500 Caprice. He was driving really erratically, too, lane hopping all over the place but not really getting ahead anywhere.
In some ways it kinda made me sad, too, that here he was, probably in his 80's (or a really rough-life 70s), and driving around in a car like that. It made me think of the old adage about you youth is wasted on the young, and retirement is wasted on the old, or something like that.
It also made me wonder though, if the truly rich often suffer discrimination like that? Where us mere mortals see them driving around in those fancy cars and think they're trying to show off, when they're actually simply so well off that even with something like this Benz I saw, they're still living well below their means?
It's funny, but the older I get, and the more financially stable I become, I find that I want to spend as little as possible on a car.
I tried to pick a car that really fit my environment, needs, work, etc. If I lived in Canada, I bet I'd make another decision and in Florida and 85 years old, maybe yet another decision.
But for whizzing through traffic, sipping gas, hauling stuff around with multiple stops, low maintenance, reliability, competing for tight parking--- I obviously picked a practical "metro car for the man on the go". I could have bought my friend's pristine BMW 750iL for the same money (they don't change much year to year) and looked a lot richer but it would have been a really stupid choice for me (and a good one for my friend at the time).
That generally is not an issue. Most "hatchbacks" have lids that cover from the back of the rear seats to the base of the back window creating a trunk. The only time you see into the trunk is if you remove the lid. In general, that is when you have a very large load. In such cases, you are generally going fairly directly from point A to point B and are not going to be sitting around in a shopping mall much. I guess if you really had to keep such a load in your vehicle, you could cover it up with a big blanket, but that might not avoid theft if the crooks decided to take the chance on the possibility of finding something worthwhile under the blanket.
The Chevy HHR and Malibu Maxx have "lids" which can be mounted low or high. If they are mounted low, you get a small hidden compartment under a flat floored bed. If you mount it high, then you get a really big trunk. But that is not implying that other manufacturers are not as good. I just happen to know those two products because I was looking at them recently.
But to be honest the cars I notice the most fall into just a few examples. If the driver is driving differently from the rest of us, too fast too slow or changing lanes too much. I notice other vehicles just like the one I might be driving at the time. I notice flashy cars and exotic cars. I notice cars I dislike. My two least favorite vehicles on the road today are first generation xBs and Elements. Sometimes I notice VWs but only when they are out of the shop so that doesn't happen that often. :P
Well honestly, I noticed him because he was driving like Cruella DeVille trying to run down a stray Dalmatian! If he was just going with the flow of traffic, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
I mean, I also noticed the limey green '77 LeSabre Custom sedan with the white vinyl top and the faded hood and trunk that passed by us on the way to the store. :P Oddly, the thing that draw my attention to it was that the decklid was peeling almost how those clearcoat cars tended to in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I've never seen a 70's car do that. I've seen them do other bad things, but this was a new one on me!
I usually tend to notice cars that are driving erratically, cars that are old, or cars that I happen to like (which are often old, anyway). Or, if it's something that's been discussed here on Edmund's, it may stick in my mind more when I see one on the road.
Even Shifty has indicated his xA could use a few more ponies and that making it bigger when it became to xD made it almost perfect, and he like small cars. But our culture says if a little is good then more is better. we have developed this idea over 231 years and it isn't likely to change in the next 20. We would much rather spend research bucks on how to keep our vehicles bigger with more HP than to invest in small light weight cars. Scion should be a prime example of that when they added the larger engine to their smaller selling cars. The tC out sold the other two right out of the gate and it came with the bigger engine from day one.
The Compact has kept its place pretty well for the last few years but it isn't likely that the Sub Compact will become the standard for the American consumer in my lifetime. IMHO.
Off post, but I'm responding to the Hosts' post
I think we enjoy the myth of believing we are the best way to live because advertising has drummed that into our heads since we were infants. But direct observation suggests holes in that myth....that it's a partial reality. If we were so happy we wouldn't be so hungry and insatiable. A Yaris would be our limousine, gliding us around like kings on soft rubber tires, taking us wherever we wished to go at 75 mph for only pennies per mile. Why, it's like a magic carpet from fairy tales!
But NOOOOOO, we need seat heaters and NAV and little wipers for our headlights and a power tailgate of course, of course.
Did you like the way I got back on topic?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzLLMa3eOXE
lol!
With a catchy song, no less. Fahr mit mir!
That said, I personally would much rather have a Mini (or some older German vehicle that isn't practical for daily transportation in the "real" world).
You need to drive a Yaris, really. Great bang for the buck.
Are you still thinking little cars are those crap cans from the early 90s?
I don't think things sucked that bad even back then. I spent a lot of time in SR20 powered Nissans (Sentra SE-R, NX2000, Infiniti G20) and they were a lot of fun. I also liked the CRX and Civic SI. Even the 323/Protege wasn't that bad of a ride.
I think the mid-to-late 80s Toyota Tercel EZ turned a generation off from sub-compact cars.
And she's not the first. I have had three or four similarly detailed inquiries in the last few months, and the most recent purchased a Yaris as a result. I'm convertin' 'em one buyer at a time! ;-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
To this day hatchbacks have not shed that cheap image.
I don't know that the Escort was that unfavorable to the Corolla/Tercel of the time. I remember the early 80s Corollas deteriorating when exposed to sunlight. The Omni had some redeeming qualities because it could hold 4 people comfortable, and actually had a little room for stuff left over.
I think the Chevette was a very sad time, especially by the mid-80s when it was an 8 y/o design.
Personally, for a person who needs to get to work and back, I want a no-frills car that is cheap to maintain. I would like to own a similar vehicle without all of the fancy garbage (especially electronics) that run up the operating costs of the vehicle.
When I need a car for a long trip, the no-frills commuter car goes into the garage, and off I head to Hertz/Avis/Alamo and pick up a more comfortable drive.
I will agree that GM cheapened the car each and every model year and the 1986 version did not compare with the 1980 version.