Youth Drives the Trend to Small

Small cars are coming back, if the new vehicles and concepts at the Detroit Auto Show are any indication. And that's good news for those of us who love cars we can throw around with the seat of our pants and park where others fear to tread. It's not that small cars, in the rest of the world, ever went away; this is the only market where they've never been fully appreciated, except when responding to some real or imagined oil shortage. But times change and now there's a trend among sensitive younger buyers who see them as an antidote to gas-guzzling sport-utes. This generation is also responding to the sport-compact movement that began in California and was awarded authentication, for better or worse, by the film The Fast and the Furious. (Mazda MX Micro shown.)