Maybe they should instead actually make those AVAILABLE in america.
We don't have a class between for example a fiesta and a smart car, and since smart cars are overpriced crap they are not really worth mentioning.
No one would buy them. I mentioned this problem before in another thread but basically you have two fairly distinct markets in the US:
1) Large densely populated cities
2) Rest of the country
For the former small cars make sense for commute and getting around purposes as traffic is fairly bad and parking is at a premium. The reasons it doesn't make any sense whatsoever are:
1) Parking is generally regulated (at least in high traffic areas) so parking spots are of predefined length based on the size of a work van usually. Also for commuters street parking rarely makes sense as it has time limits, usually those who do drive to work would park in parking garages. Now this might only be NYC specific I don't know but IIRC Boston was similar. The business areas of the city pretty much don't allow any parking during the day aside from commercial traffic,those are trucks/vans anyway.
2) Public transit systems are fairly well established, coupled with above few people actually drive to work in the larger areas. I work with a couple of people who live outside the city and they drive to the commuter rail to get to the city they don't drive to the city itself. As such a large portion of people will only buy a car if they WANT one as they don't generally NEED one (at least not enough to buy it, renting/zipcar like services would make more sense). Nobody WANTS an Aygo or a Sentra (outside of the older SE-R maybe) so people will buy larger/nicer cars. I can tell you that A4 and 3 series are damn near ubiquitous in NYC these days. There are very few beaters driving around most of the cars are no more than 5 years old.
3) Owning a car is generally more expensive in larger cities, insurance, gas, road tolls tend to be higher than in more rural areas. Now on the face of it it should make small cars more desirable. Reality is that coupled with point 2 there is really no reason to own a car so people will not buy "crappy" cars just to be able to get around as they can do it easily enough already. For the times they want cars they get zip car or some other rental. (there are a shitload of zip cars running around the city).
Other place where a car is required have enough room to allow for the larger cars and price is generally not much of a consideration as there are always plenty of used cars to choose from and insurance and fuel prices are generally pretty low.