The Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic are in a class by themselves in terms of fuel efficiency, there are an awful lot of other small cars, some even smaller than those two, but nothing that comes close in fuel efficiency. I think getting that efficiency requires careful end-to-end tuning out everything that other manufacturers haven’t done. Also superficially both vehicles look kinda expensive for what you seem to get but they are well built so when/if they quit making them I think you’ll see used vehicles with 100,000 miles selling at “new” prices.