Agree you with on the PT Cruiser, but the HHR was the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever driven. Was given one as a rental and I feel fortunate to have survived the road trip without any long term disabilities. Wife and kids didn’t have a good time but at least they didn’t have to contort their bodies to drive the thing.
I still have a 2002 PT Cruiser, even though it’s almost 20 years old now. Several years ago I rented a 2006, and it was a total piece of crap. I was amazed at how they managed to ruin a car in the span of 4 years. They even ruined the interior and the hatch. I’ve actually had fewer repairs than any other car I’ve ever owned. Plus, it’s the only compact car in which I can stack my art work, up to 40"x56", and close the hatch, without moving the front seat forward.
I just want to pile on the HHR hate. Back in the mid 00’s when I was flying around the country for my job, I drove a lot of them as rentals. Every. Single. One smelled of cat food. All of them. Like there was a 50lb bag of dry cat food spilled in the trunk or something.
You’re assuming that most consumers care about performance. They don’t. They want a car that looks cool, nothing more. If you don’t care about driving fast but want to look like you do, then you buy a car that looks like it drives fast, but doesn’t.
Many consumers are happy with a car that goes from point A to point B, comfortably and without malfunctioning. Performance and “looking cool” are secondary considerations.
True, but people do buy fast-looking cars, and my claim is that most consumers of fast-looking cars care more about the “looking” than they do about the “fast”.
I had a 2010 Nissan Versa hatchback. It was so underpowered it had problems getting up moderately steep hills. It was also a light weight subcompact that somehow even new at best got 26/mpg…
A modern example for you: “People” complain the Toyota GT86 is underpowered, and by extension, the Subaru BRZ. They both have a touch over 200 horsepower. Unless you’re on a track, how much horsepower do you really need, anyway?
As an aside, a PT Cruiser would make a magnificent-looking ratrod.
That reminds me: one of my sisters owned a Fiat sedan when I was very little, maybe a 125. We lived in a relatively flat area and that little car had trouble getting up any of the few hills. She eventually had enough and sold the car.
Couple of weeks later, we were driving through town and I spotted her old Fiat up for sale again.
Yeah, my Acura’s speedo tops out at 140 mph so all the actual driving speeds are squished into the first third of the dial. Sure looks impressive, though. 
The Suburban, OTOH tops out at 90 and in the wilds of Nevada I’ve had it to 80 when making up time, as indicated by GPS. The V8 gets thirsty, though so I don’t do it often.
I suppose lot of modern “base” models may have low power engines on purpose to force down the fleet average CAFE numbers. But you have to be careful, you don’t want to have the power plant be too weak or this happens:
When the engine has to work harder relative to itself (and thus burn more fuel than expected) to even move a lightweight vehicle out of its own way. The CAFE test is in a controlled lab environment and has historically produced at best an aspirational number.
I’d want a car that can at least handle a moderate uphill with two average adults and one regular suitcase in it without sounding like it’s going to blow up or feeling that if you stop you will be unable to resume motion.
Took the family on an outing over the Bighorn Mountains in a 4-banger Mustang… I was barely able to top 40 mph heading up the pass out of Buffalo, Wyoming. What a miserable ride that little car was.
Pffft … suggest you edit that or you just might find a couple of very unhappy Rafales on your six some day 
Although the base DS was a little gutless because of a bad choice of engine, once you got a a 2.3 litre Pallas there was nothing to touch them for long journeys regardless of the state of the road.
Side track - DS is pronounced, in French, as déesse which translates as ‘Goddess’; very apt (in my opinion).
What a sports car!!! My Pinto was better performing than that Mustang but I think it was mainly due to the standard transmission.
My friend had a 1980s VW Jetta diesel. Non-turbo. You drove it with the accelerator to the floor the whole time. It had some torque, but very little horsepower.
So true. But they looked gorgeous.
Yes, very apt indeed: they not only looked gorgeous, they were also capricious and expensive. Bonus points: even I could stretch my legs in the back.
The Pallas was a completely different generation, 20 yr later.
But you want really underpowered? OK, brace yourself: Mercedes /8, diesel, automatic. Sometimes called Beirut taxis. Still loved them: most leisurely driving ever. You never got a ticket for speeding, not even in the GDR.
The Fiero was intended to not only be. “Commuter” car but optioned correctly quite the sports car. Supposedly the Corvette branch of GM got wind that a properly optioned Fiero could run circles around a Corvette and made Pontiac put an end to the options until they knew the Fiero was going to be killed.
Underpowered Cars
Take a look at this: volvo p1800s - Bing images
Looks fast, don’t it? Not even. Powered by the B20 4 cyl (made famous for being the ‘go to’ for sailboat engines). 0-60 sometime in the future, but it will cruise at 70! Electric Overdrive!
My kid has had 2 PT Cruisers, but I really haven’t driven either. The first was the turbo with an auto, the current is bare bones. I’ve had to work on them some. 
I learned to drive in a '73 with a 460 V8. It had a good chunk of muscle.
Every car manufacturer faces the problem that the actual total envelope of possible performances available between the minimum that’s legal / safe and the maximum that’s sane for use on the street by mainstream drivers, not raging gearheads, is really pretty narrow compared to the kinds of brakes, tires, suspensions, and engines available in 2021.
And yet they have to squeeze 15 or 20 models across 1 to 5 brands into that performance space and leave enough room between each that somebody will buy each of them.
The same problem occurs on comfort features, snazziness of interior, range of colors and options, computer gizmos, etc.
I recently traded in a top-of-the-line model older car for the second-rank model but much newer car of the same make. Lots of technological progress seen and the newer car’s computer systems are like a smartphone versus a flip-phone in the old car.
And yet there are several obvious areas where the newer car is the lesser one. They deliberately nerfed a few things the older car did better several years previously. Why? IMO so those things could still be made better on the newer model year of the top-of-the-line model that I didn’t buy.
Camaros (and Firebirds back in the day) have been nerfed since the git-go to keep enough headroom above them and below the baseline Corvette that anyone would pay the price premium to buy the base 'Vette.
My '79 Dodge Colt had, I believe, a 70 hp engine, but I wouldn’t call it underpowered.
Any more power and things might’ve started flying off the chassis.
It was actually a nice car which I had for nearly 10 years. It even ran fine after it got flooded in a parking lot after heavy thunderstorms, which forced me to bail water out the window while driving home. It never smelled quite right afterwards, though.