Readers want what the industry deemed unprofitable—honest, small-footprint runabouts with actual personality. The Fiat 500, MINI Cooper, and Renault Twingo proved the formula worked; bean counters just decided margins on crossovers looked better on quarterly reports.

Autocar's staff went to war over which model defined each marque. From the MG ZT-T 260's sleeper credibility to whether a 911 variant beats the 356, they're parsing the real difference between good and generational. The gap between what journalists remember and what the market actually values keeps widening.