Growing up, the next door neighbor had a diesel Rabbit, which was great on mileage but it wouldn't work on really cold days. U.S. manufacturers attempted to co

Growing up, the next door neighbor had a diesel Rabbit, which was great on mileage but it wouldn't work on really cold days. U.S. manufacturers attempted to copy the success of the Rabbit with several models of hatchbacks. My father had a ~1981 Plymouth Horizon (aka Dodge Omni) which apparently was based on Chrysler engineers purchasing 100 Rabbits to reverse-engineer the concept in the mid 1970s. Because Chrysler at the time had no capacity to manufacture 4 cylinder engines, they purchased them from VW, a fact which my father liked to mention (American cars had a bad reputation for quality and gas efficiency around this time). Regarding the hatchback concept, my mother owned a car called the AMC Pacer which predated the Rabbit but the model seemed to have petered out by the mid 1970s. She also owned a Dodge Colt hatchback, an even smaller car than the Rabbit which was manufactured under contract by Mitsubishi. https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a38884277/1974-dodge-colt-a-very-car-like-little-car/ https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/classic-cars/a38884277/197...