I did preface it by saying that we like road trips.
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I drove small cars when I was young because that was all I could afford.
I cannot see why any adult who can afford a bigger car would want a greased-lightning tiny car, especially if you are over 6 feet tall. It makes no sense. Pretty much all new cars can drive the speed limit, or even over the speed limit. What sense does it make to buy a car that can go a lot faster? Everywhere I drive (emphasis: EVERYWHERE) there is traffic, so you can only go as fast as the car in front of you, so what difference does it make that your car could theoretically get to the speed limit a second and a half faster ?
How do you bring home furniture from Costco in a Corolla? And 3 cyl Corolla, at that. Just laughable.
I live in a city, I like a car I can park. Don’t care about speed.
Wife has the big car for when grandkids visit, we can all go together
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so do I. For long ones I used to rent a car.
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What’s laughable is that I pictured your face turning a shade of DeepPurple as you went on your rant here.
The extra $200/mo that I save on car & gas payments by driving a Prius instead of a Ford F150 go into my “Rent-a-truck OR delivery-for-large-items” fund. Right now, I have $1.2M in there, so I’m not too worried about it.
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Can you see that not every adult lives in a place where there is traffic EVERYWHERE?
Also, sometimes it’s nice to be able to get up to speed when you need to, and not when your car feels like it (e.g. short freeway on-ramps, or when you are passing one of those slow cars in front of you).
Not a Lexus, but if you are in the market for a car, this might be the way to go given you actually get a discount off MSRP for most of these (also keep in mind the article was written when local prices were below MSRP so the deal is better now).
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I am a small car fan. Easy to get around parking lots or in traffic, lower weight improves handling. If you’re in Southern California, I get the comment about traffic, probably hard there to enjoy any car.
We do find that a few times per year we have to either pay to have something delivered or rent a truck. But a compact hatchback is more practical than it may appear. I had two fence posts snap and hauled home two 8’ fence posts and 200lb of concrete in my Chevy Volt.
I’m hoping to buy a Civic Type R when the 2023 is released. I will fully concede that it’s not about need.
Nothing better than a road trip with my SO. No work, kids, house stuff. We just hop in the car and talk nonstop for hours.
In terms of car size I like my monster vehicle, but I still like driving my son’s zippy honda civic.
Same. My current car is a VW GTI.
Easy parking, great handling, great breaking, good fuel economy, power for highway on-ramps/passing, fun to drive, and yet still holds a lot.
I’ve had people do a WTF reaction when I pull up to tailgate next to full size SUV’s and pull out a bunch of gear. It will easily fit 2 tables, a 10x10 pop up tent, 4-6 chairs, big cooler and small food cooler, TV and stand, grill, other gear…and still have room for another passenger in the front. It will also fit fairly tall folks.
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I, apparently, am not a small car fan.
But seriously my Charger is a really comfortable drive and it’s basically a family sedan with the four doors.
It’s easy to park (if you park it away from everybody else in the back), great handling (probably)… fuel economy 
… power (that you can hear a block away!), very fun to drive, and holds children.
Huge fan, the GTI gets pretty much everything right.
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Small cars are easy to park but not easy to get OUT of a parking space when you are surrounded by giant trucks and SUVs as seems to be the case where I live. I also find I have fewer blind spots in my small SUV. I won’t go back to a car unless I have to.
We are kind of in the market for a vehicle but hoping to wait out this chip shortage. Just put a new transmission in Mr aj’s older-than-dirt truck bc of it.
my mom’s friend just sold a car for more than what she got it for 4 years ago. Cars are finally appreciating assets!
I’ve never had that problem, although I have driven a couple of small cars with poor sight-lines. (not my cars, good visibility is something I consider when I test-drive cars. And I don’t care if YOU can see fine in your Prius, the sight lines were terrible for where I sit in the car.)
I am also a small car fan. I like a perky car that’s easy to maneuver, easy to merge, and easy to park. I like a small turning radius. I like a hatch-back, because it’s so incredibly flexible.
In my ideal world, we’d have one small car, probably electric, that’s fun to drive and easy to park. And the other car would be capacious and hold people and stuff to drive away for a week on vacation. My husband and I are nearly the same length from hip to toe, so we don’t need to adjust the seats between drivers, just the mirrors, and we usually have a “use this car unless it’s in use” car and a second car. The small one would be the “use this” car.
Neither of us is especially tall nor especially short for American adults, so we both generally fit comfortably in every car on the market. (I’m a little tall for a woman, he’s a little short for a man. We are both pretty close to “average US adult”.)
This was true for all of the previous small cars I’ve owned, but my current one (2018?) has sensors that warn me of rear-cross traffic.
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That’s a good idea. I thought Toyota had a program for Japan pickup, but I don’t know if that extends to Lexus (or if I’m even remembering right about Toyota) or how easy/hard it is to travel to Japan these days. Hubby occasionally travels to Osaka for work… he could probably volunteer for the next Osaka trip that comes up.
As I understand you buy the car there and then drive it around enough that it’s considered “used” and then ship it to the US, right?
Obviously we wouldn’t be driving the car home from Osaka.
It didn’t take long for this specifically created thread to derail.
Small cars (and manual transmission) are more fun to drive when there’s no traffic or backseat passengers.
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This is my first automatic car in decades. I occasionally miss rowing the gears, but am generally happier not dealing with shifting in traffic.
What that?
Just jesting. I learned to drive on a stick shift, and have owned 3 manual transmission cars, when I was young. But the MPG advantage of 5 speed manuals over 3 speed automatics is gone, now that automatics have 6, 8, 10 (or infinity) gears. The MPG forces manufacturers to go all automatics to meet fuel economy requirements on everything but high end sports cars.