[MadMan]

Eh, massive American engines were not really a result of laziness or however you want to describe it. It was a result of a lust for power, and their inefficiency and lack of power was a result of government emissions regulations.

Also, it's important to note that these engines were low-revving, which necessarily meant they had little horsepower. But horses aren't really a big deal, it's torque that really matters, and they still had plenty of that. And emissions regulations really began in 1975 (I think) when catalytic converters became legally required. Before that, those big American engines that we now consider 'weak' were often making hundreds of horsepower, sometimes 1 per cubic inch. They were made weak to meet emissions standards.

The thing about little foreign cars dominating the market was two-fold. One, yes they had small engines, but they were much smaller and MUCH lighter. Where a normal American full-size car would be around 4000lbs, a VW Beetle was literally less than half of that. So a small engine, despite being very weak compared to a big American engine, even one bogged down with emissions crap, could easily handle a much lighter vehicle. And it would be doing literally half the work, so better gas mileage. The other part of the story is that back in those days, many of the much smaller displacement engines were not required by the American government to even have emissions controls. No catalytic, no EGR, basically nothing. They were largely exempt from all the things that made the big engines weak and inefficient. So the concept that the little foreign engines were so much better than the big American engines is really a myth. The little foreigners were literally playing the game with a different set of rules.

Granted, little foreign cars appearing on the open market drove competition, even if the big three were slow to adapt, it did happen. (Unfortunately that's kind of led to all new cars being the same crap.)