Subcompact Economy Car Comparison

Wait! Don't flip that page just because the pictures show a bunch of four-door econoboxes. Sure, at first glance they resemble cars from the bottom of the Hertz and Avis price sheets--and since none of them wears Evo-esque wings, flares, airdams, or other overt signs of swagger, you can be forgiven for thinking these cars are automotive white bread.

It turns out that, while we've been distracted by spicy high-horse hardware and high-tech hybrids, the Happy Meal sedan has grown up, come of age. Scan the option sheets of the five compact four-doors collected here, and you'll find such extravagances as Xenon headlamps and navigation (Mazda3); satellite radio, OnStar telematics, and a trip computer (Chevy Cobalt); tire-pressure monitoring (Toyota Corolla); heated seats and moonroofs (several). The Kia Spectra SX, Toyota Corolla, and Mazda3 are equipped with head-curtain and front-seat side-impact airbags. And all five boast some manner of sport-suspension tuning.

There's no free lunch, of course, and, at $20,000 give or take, these little cars cost more than the entry-level versions of their midsize stablemates, all of which suggests that at least some American adults spending their own money may now be choosing to commute and haul their friends and young families around in smaller, nimbler, more fuel-efficient cars. Can these light entries satisfy?

Our last roundup of hot, cheap four-doors (January 2004) crowned the Ford SVT Focus ZX5 champ. There are no SVTs for 2005, but that model's spirit (and its struts, dampers, and dynamic tuning) live on in a new ZX4 ST sedan model. A Mazda-based 151-horse, 2.3-liter trades 19 horses for 10 more pound-feet of torque (145 total) relative to the SVT's somewhat peaky 2.0 liter. For 2005, Ford only offers this "big motor" with a row-your-own five-speed. The price is $1500 over the cost of the next-best SES model.

While we Yanks make do with new engines and freshened styling, Europe gets a whole new Focus. To find out if we're getting shortchanged, one need only drive a Mazda3 built on the same new platform. In its sportiest "s" trim, it gets a slightly different version of the same 2.3 liter, good for 160 horses in dirty states, 144 in the squeaky-clean ones, where it achieves partial-zero-emissions-vehicle status (the tester is a PZEV car).