2017 Ramcharger

There is no cost savings in making things smaller. If anything it costs more to make them smaller. Especially when you want it to not just pass a crash test but get 5 stars.
What we need is to make safety and emissions optional not required. Then we could have interesting choices with really low prices. There are some great little cars in India that cost well under $5000 brand new. Safe, no, reliable, somewhat, get 40 mpg, yes. Probably just as safe and lower emission then any a body ever made.
There are also cheep diesel small trucks out there in the world outlawed by the EPA and DOT for import.