This is the time of the small car. The car you want to own, the one you'll brag about. The rock 'n' roll small car.
Americans are being offered the best crop of compacts in recent memory, if not all time. Hot hatchbacks, rear-wheel-drive hellions, impish convertibles and turbo-charged tykes, all crying out for very modest dollars.
And they've responded by buying: the U.S. saw a 50 percent increase in small car sales this September.
Not long ago, purchasing a compact or subcompact meant compromising, giving in or even giving up. For every Volkswagen GTI with a furious little engine built for fun, we were awash with tinny toys like the Ford Aspire, Geo Prizm and Hyundai Excel. Now, if you've got $22,000 or more and buy a boring car, it's your own darn fault.
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