cap: *chuckle* nah, I think it was a bad port or something. the A160 and Audi's A2 just weren't up to snuff(even tuned to max!), and Fiat's Coupe turbo, the EK civics, and the 156 all went downhill in quality and handling between GT2 and GT4. Scion's entries (two of the smaller Toyotas with their American lables) were a bit under powered, but I'm not pasing up a bB. us yanks like our little shoeboxes.
I'm quite fond of hot hatches, and even tune the ever loving crap out of two cylinder cars on there. I would LOVE a Dihatsu Copen, but Dihatsu had ONE YEAR over here with the Charade and a Terios...and they didn't sell (in 1991!) we also got stuck with Daewoos, breifly. I think that was what helped sour americans on small cars and hatches, at least untill now.
btw, americans pretty much dropped every car body but saloons and crossovers. apparently, coupes raise your insurance rates through the roof, no-one sees a need for a hatch, MPV's and Estates are for football moms, and if it ain't a full size pickup, it's a gas guzzler (for some weird reason, smaller pickups are dead in the states as well, now, probably due to the chicken tax. Mahindra was seriously looking at pulling one of theirs over here till they hit that)
oh, and the reason we call it a "trunk"? in the early thirties, there were literall steamer trunks on a rack on the back!
you want underpowered? my toyotas were victim of this due to sheer old age. I had a first gen camry hatch that was beat to death, and somebody took apart the engine and put it back together with blue-tac! my 4Runner/Hi-Lux Surf maxed out at 35 on a 9% grade with a load and the 3VZE V6. I had LOADED LORRIES blowing my doors off!
LI: like I said above, coupes have a general ban on in the american popular mind, so they fake it.
