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sparky wrote:.
I'm not sure if this is relevant but city driving speed and public parking size have shrunk to the point where a smaller car make plenty of sense , there is less small country folks and more city dwellers now .

I can see this in larger cities where things have gotten very crowded.

But there are a LOT of small (and often rapidly growing) cities as well, that have the advantage of being "a city" where lots of things are close, but don't (yet) have the general traffic jams and generally slow traffic (aside from rush hours) that infest very large cities.

(Via the internet, apparently "city" doesn't have a hard minimum population limit, unlike what I thought). So I'm talking population centers of, say, 20,000 and up, not the 2500 and up size that gets defined as "urban" via the internet.

So to me, though I'd never want to drive a "large" car every day, driving a "Smart Car", or any small car to avoid parking/crowding problems (given it's cost re functionality) is not a significant factor until you live where parking/crowding becomes a major inconvenience.

I suppose one's viewpoint on this will depend on where one has lived(?) Or maybe your age. In my 20's, having 4 doors wasn't even worth considering. Now, easy 4-door access to the back seat for groceries, etc. is a very nice little convenience, IMO.