Are Subcomact Cars Any Good?

With higher fuel prices people are downsizing to get higher gas mileage. There are lots of cars they can choose, used cars, subcompacts, hybrids, and the best one of diesels. There aren't very many diesel and most are rather expensive. Hybrids are also too expensive and you almost never will make up the cost premium over a normal car in gas savings. Used cars aren't likely to get that great of gas mileage, because they would be larger. That leaves subcompacts as the only real solution that works well enough. There are lots and even more of them coming. There will be a sedan version of the next Ford Fiesta that comes here and will be very good, especially if we get a diesel version. Honda is bringing out a new Fit, that will also be very good, but the current one is still a good car. The Mini Cooper is an absolutely great car, but is expensive and makes sense as a sports car in the Cooper S version, but the Clubman is just silly. The Mini would be great for fuel economy as the diesel version sold in Europe that gets over 60 mpg on the highway. The Smart Fortwo is only good for cities, because its gas mileage is the same as a Honda Civic. The Toyota Yaris seems like a good car, but has a terrible old design and overall is a bad car. The Nissan Versa is a wonderful car, it has great gas mileage, is very practical, and got good crash test ratings from IIHS in frontal, side, and whiplash protection tests. The Chevy Aveo is a terrible car, it's unsafe, has bad quality, and has a terrible chassis, it's useless. The KIA Rio/Hyundai Accent are fairly good, but got terrible crash test ratings. The Scion xD is very good, safe, inexpensive, practical, and fairly fun. The problem these cars have is there are small cars that are safer, more fun, and just as fuel efficient. These are at least much better than the older subcompacts, which were almost all terrible and they are getting much better.