“Sorry - HAVE gotten bigger. Not haven’t.”
If you dropped a pencil between the driver’s seat of my 2010 Jetta and the center console you’d have to fish it out with a piece of wire. The seat cupped you so tightly that turning around was nearly impossible. I felt like I was wearing the car and it was too tight, yet I am average sized. The regular model had a trunk opening that wouldn’t accept a modestly large cooler.
This is why people are abandoning cars for trucks and SUV’s.
My point was the 1990s version of those cars were even smaller, so that can’t be the reason. The reason for the shift has been 1)lower gas prices and 2) Crossovers and more option today have brought better variety and pricing for trucks and SUVs.