Shrinking and growing (and shrinking?)

In our neighborhood there's a relatively straight-looking early 4th Generation Honda Accord, a 1990 or '91 model with the little motorized seatbelt gerbils, still doing yeoman service as a daily driver.

The current Civic sedan is the same length, three inches wider, an inch taller, about three hundred pounds heavier, and has 20% more power. Broadly speaking, the automotive downsizing trend probably slowed and reversed sometime in the early Nineties.

A 1990 Accord LX sedan started at about fifteen grand, roughly six thousand dollars less than a base '21 Civic LX four-door. (Of course, adjusted for inflation that 15k in GHWB dollars is close to thirty two thousand Biden Bucks.)

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