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Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Everyone being like - we don't care about cars that small. It's the equivalent at looking at LLMs two years ago and being - it can't perform anything. It's an entry point and they will get bigger and better and more attractive - to the benefit of consumers upping the competition.

Kia was written off when it first came to town. US domestics should be concerned - they wrote off Tesla as well.

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Before Kia it was Honda and Toyota in the 80s/90s. Before that there was the 70s love affair with small Italian and British imports like Fiat and Mini. Before that was the 60s love affair with Volkswagen. It's a cycle that has happened so many times already in the US of imports filling small car niches (both niches that are small and large niches that include smaller cars) the domestic manufacturers ignore for too many years at a time. You would almost think that US manufacturers would have learned by now given how many times it has repeated.

I'm not even a car person, and I can name 2-3 domestics attempts during each of those eras.

Nobody's ignoring anything. It's just a hard market for them to sustain because demand is reletively low here and margins are thin as part of the market's intense price sensitivity.

It's a good place for new/foreign manufacturers to gain brand awareness because niche demand persists but it's not profitable enough for any car maker really benefits to focus on here, where luxury/design/size all invite much bigger profits

I agree that it is a habit of high margin profit chasing. It also says a lot that almost every time the imports become "domesticated" they seem to move into the same problematic high margin areas. Honda US and Nissan US are huge truck companies today. Kia US is mostly a luxury SUV company.

However, I disagree that it is a sustainability problem because I think it is a "fashion trend" problem and companies aren't good at predicting trends (especially not ones on the scale of decades in current US corporate culture), and are just sticking to bad habits (that unfortunately are profit rewarded enough that they don't feel enough relentless "quarterly" pressure to challenge those bad habits).

>I can name 2-3 domestics attempts during each of those eras

can you name any that didnt suck? :) That crosses iconic Pinto and Pacer out straight off the bat. In the 80s maybe only Omni was ok, 90s hmm Neon? Rebadged Japanese cars sold under Geo brand dont count.

Geo weren't rebadged, they were built in California. Geo and its NUMMI plant was a strange collaboration between Toyota and GM (even the Geo logo had both Toyota's lines and GM's Chevrolet "bow tie"). Which is more important to note that Geo entirely existed because GM realized it had entirely forgot how to make smaller cars and begged Toyota to teach it its ways, years after Honda and Toyota were winning hearts and minds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI

I really want a car that small - as the family's second car

In Germany in work-related traffic (commuting I guess) there are 1.1 persons per car in average. I guess it's similar in many other countries. So a small car like this would be perfect for most commuters. I always dream of a one/two-seat vehicle for that purpose, something alike the Renault Twizy.

> Kia was written off when it first came to town.

Hyundai/Kia were smart in that they introduced their cars with really long warranties to dispel quality concerns. However, they lost a lot of credibility recently with their cars being famous for being easy to steal via YouTube tutorials and tiktok challenges.

My point is that they managed a way into the market and held market share with considerable doubt against them.

It is just that if you said that maybe 5 years ago, it would sound stronger than today when they are currently losing credibility at a rapid clip.

Saying Americans only want big cars is just as ignorant as saying Europeans only want small cars.

It's an import - the car companies will get the government to stack enough tariffs and fees to push the price up higher, because they know they can't compete without that.

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