Two oil crises in the 1970s prompted US car buyers to seek more fuel-efficient alternatives to Detroit’s vast and profligate land yachts. At first, those newcomers came from Japanese car-makers, such as Honda and Toyota, and European brands, such as Volkswagen and BMW, which were already building what Americans considered to be small cars for their own buyers. US car-makers hit back with their own compact cars, not always with great success. But they only really got into their stride in the early 1980s, developing new platforms that were the basis for hundreds of thousands of compacts during the decade.