The rules penalized larger cars, but but equivalent sized SUVs. They also mandated a lot of new safety stuff that is heavy: airbags, side impact protection, pe

The rules penalized larger cars, but but equivalent sized SUVs. They also mandated a lot of new safety stuff that is heavy: airbags, side impact protection, pedestrian crash stuff, crumple zones, cameras, etc. So this basically killed off wagons, which were what people actually wanted to drive. My last three cars have gone from 2500 (1998) to 2750 (2016) to 3300 (2022) despite being basically the same size and same function.