One of the longest and least stable will-they-or-won’t-they relationships isn’t between two people, but all Americans and small cars. And while newly proposed changes to federal fuel economy standards mostly leave the door open for more polluting, bigger gasoline-only vehicles in the future, there was a veiled attempt to widen the types of vehicles available in the US.
The President thinks that includes very small cars, too. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t mean they’d go mainstream here anyway.
During the announcement of the plan to roll back US fuel economy standards to those of a decade ago on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he wanted very small cars as widely seen in some parts of Asia, called kei cars in Japan, to come to this country and also be built here, saying that people told him they’d do well but that this country’s regulations wouldn’t allow it.
What Trump was most likely referring to is a car that’s defined by Japanese regulations as a vehicle that’s no longer than 3.4 meters (11.15 feet), has an engine capacity no greater than 0.66 liters, with no more than 63 horsepower, and can seat no more than four people. By comparison, the smallest gasoline-powered car sold in the US today is the Mini Cooper 2-Door, which has a 2.0-liter engine, 156 horsepower, four seats, and is 3.9 meters (12.71 feet) long.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy backed this up by describing the changes necessary because under the previous standards, “consumers were denied the choice of what is best for their needs,” directly targeting any deadlines for required electrification. But the following morning, Duffy recalled the days of the 1970s woodgrain-paneled station wagon as the default vehicle of middle America, a vehicle typically powered by a V8, in excess of 18 feet long, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. That sounds a lot like a four-door, full-size pickup truck like the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, or Ram 1500, all among the best-selling vehicles in the country in the 21st century.
How does a kei car, many of which have top speeds around 80 mph, compete against a three-ton vehicle that’s not only exponentially more powerful but also much taller and wider?
We’ve been down this road a few times before with only temporary relief. The 2007-2008 financial crisis brought economic uncertainty, credit crunches, and erratic gas prices that made it untenable to buy and operate large SUVs and pickup trucks. Companies tried turning Americans onto smaller vehicles like the Smart Fortwo and Mini, while they simultaneously manufactured popular higher-end versions of compact cars and SUVs like the Ford Focus, Chevy Cruze, and Dodge Dart that included features like heated steering wheels and rear seats, navigation systems, and commanded nearly $30,000. All of those except the Mini have since been discontinued in the US; most Minis sold today are not the traditional two-door hatchback but instead the not-small Countryman SUV.
In the 1950s and 1960s, tiny cars like the original Fiat 500 and Mini, as well as the front-door-ed BMW Isetta landed in the US in numbers as small as their footprint. They couldn’t match the demand of the far more popular, usable, and sometimes less expensive Volkswagen Beetle and early models from Datsun and Toyota.
The most notable tiny car was the Subaru 360, first imported in 1968 with a two-cylinder engine, weighing in at less than 1,000 pounds and thereby skirting any formal crash regulations at the time. It was memorably eviscerated in a Consumer Reports review the following year, citing insufficient crash protection and performance, but the bigger issue was the indication that a car like the Subaru was a bridge too far for the most common vehicles on the largest American roads, despite good fuel economy, relatively low base price, and urban compatibility.
Interestingly, Subaru attempted the same thing roughly 40 years later with the introduction of the Smart to the US amid surging fuel prices and a push for “affordability.” Two four-seat Subaru kei cars were imported to the company’s US headquarters in New Jersey in 2007, according to a 2019 story from The Drive, but were ultimately deemed unsuitable for mainstream sales because they were too small, partly because of the driving conditions, but also because American people were too big for them.
All of this reinforces the idea that what the American people, the EPA, NHTSA, and other agencies consider to be a small car is what many other countries think of as a large one. Other heavily or densely populated countries also tax drivers on a vehicle’s engine size, carbon dioxide emissions, and, in Japan, width, in addition to insurance and registration, and whatever local taxes are involved in parking and fuel.
What’s more, these tiny cars, in a bid to stay lighter and cheaper, stick predominantly to small gas-powered engines. Even though some are now available as EVs or hybrids, packaging requirements and price targets adversely affect the smallest cars on sale in every market. Trump and Duffy’s argument is that smaller cars are automatically cheaper and that will keep more money in American wallets, and that doesn’t pencil out in the proposed changes.
Last week, US Senators confirmed a January meeting with auto executives about why new cars are so expensive, and, according to The Wall Street Journal, they believe the mandated safety technology, such as automatic emergency braking and backup cameras, is the culprit, and more efforts should be put into autonomous vehicles. Small, less expensive cars could once again lack standard driver assistance systems that minimize the risk of crashes and injuries not just to people in cars, but those outside of them.
It’s not like Americans don’t have small-engined and compact cars available today, or even that they’re not popular. More than 200,000 Honda Civics and roughly the same number of Toyota Corollas have been sold through this year, along with more than 170,000 three-cylinder-powered Chevy Trax small SUVs. They might be considered midsize cars everywhere else in the world, but they take up far less space than many popular cars sold in the US.
The enthusiasts who’ve imported little Subarus, Mitsubishis, Nissans, and other kei cars to the US and have kept them running over the years are admirable for making them work and making those of us wishing for a smaller vehicle on certain streets envious. The same goes for all the people who’ve kept their Minis, Fiats, and Smarts on the Manhattan and San Francisco streets after they weren’t the flavor of the month in much of the rest of the country. They can prioritize what they need to own a car to do and focus less on what they think they might need it to do.
Americans already have a lot of choices, not just in cars, but in how to get around at all, what fuel powers their choice, and how much fuel is needed. Trump’s proposal won’t change the way the country currently and historically thinks about small cars. For kei cars to ever have a chance in the U.S., it’s going to take more than some lip service from a President who is desperate to show he has any policies that make life more affordable.
