Ok, so I looked up the specs for a 1987 Sprint and a 2011 Honda Civic LX sedan, a middle-of-the-road trim level. I don’t know exactly what models you had/have, but this should be enlightening:
The Sprint weighed in the neighborhood of 1500 lbs. It had roughly 50 hp, and made it from 0-60 mph in around 15 seconds.
Now the Civic only gets around 35 mpg highway, maybe 10-20% less than the Sprint. BUT the Civic weighs about 2,700 lbs, nearly double the Sprint. It has 140 horses that push it from 0-60 in about 8 seconds. It’s also about 30 inches longer, is taller and wider, and I’m sure in general is a more comfortable car. The fact that this car gets even close to as many mpg as the Sprint (which is basically a toy in comparison) is amazing.
I sat in one of these, but didn’t drive it. I wanted to compare it to my Fiat 500. The iQ seemed small inside. I feel bad for the people I stuff into my back seat in my 500, but I couldn’t figure out why they bothered putting in seats for the Scion.
Which is a huge advantage in some places. Admittedly, more so in Europe and Asia than US.
People are used to paying more for small size when it comes to electronics. Phones, laptops, etc - generally the more compact models, are more expensive. Why don’t people accept the same for cars?
Cars are more like TVs and houses than they are like cellphones and laptops. There isn’t a whole lot of bleeding edge miniaturization going on when they make a smaller model, it’s simply using smaller versions of current technology. Smaller engine, smaller tires, smaller body panels.
When we look at the typical slate of car models, the cheapest car is always the smallest car with the smallest engine. Price goes up as you increase size, get larger engines and add luxury features. These ultra-compact cars seem to break that mold.
There are also a fuckload more safety requirements for cars that are mandatory for the vehicle to be sold. Most of them end up putting more weight on the car and affecting performance in other ways. Thus, manufacturers have to work on new ways to shave weight off and improve performance while meeting safety (and EPA) regulations to get mpg improved.
[sub]I own a 2012 Ford Fiesta hatch an it’s the bestest car ever. Then again, I was waiting impatiently for it since I first heard they were bringing it over from Europe and NOT fucking it up. I generally get 38-39.5 mpg combined. [/sub]
this, for the love of god, this. people just don’t seem to comprehend how different modern cars are from past models. I mean, my first car had a 2.2 liter 4-banger which wheezed out 80 hp on a good day, weighed 2200 lbs, and if I got into anything approaching a serious collision would have left me with critical injuries. A “compact” car nowadays can barely get under 3,000 lbs, has multiple airbags, has to comply with NHTSA crash standards (which implies thick-ass doors and pillars) and- if they don’t want a PR nightmare- has to do well on the IIHS offset frontal impact test as well as the new slide-into-a-tree test they cooked up. It also has to basically emit nothing but carbon dioxide and water vapor; your carbureted 1987 Sprint was disgustingly filthy in comparison. Put simply, you can be driving a shit-shaker like a Smart car, get into an offset 40-mph frontal collision with something like a Benz S-class, and reasonably expect to walk away.
And the things which make that possible add weight.