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Although small cars had been made in the United States before, the modern compact class is considered to have begun in 1959 and 1960, when the Rambler American , Studebaker Lark , Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Falcon, and Plymouth Valiant all appeared in rapid succession. Within a few years after that, the compacts had given rise to a new class called the pony car, named after the Ford Mustang, which was built on the Falcon chassis.
During the 1960s, compacts were the smallest class, but, in the early 1970s automakers introduced even smaller models, the subcompact, such as the Ford PintoThe Ford Pinto was a compact car manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. It was first introduced in 1971, and was built through the 1980 model year. Like many Ford cars, it had a twin in the Mercury Bobcat. Body styles included a 2-door sedan, a three-doo and Chevrolet VegaThe Chevrolet Vega (also known as the Pontiac Astre was a compact coupe and station wagon sold from 1971 through 1977. It was based on the GM H platform and was replaced by the 1975- 1980 Chevrolet Monza . The Astre nameplate was only used in Canada from.
Today, although the general downsizing of all vehicles has somewhat blurred size class distinctions, the compact segment is still discernible as a class smaller than the average car but larger than the smallest models on the market. The Chrysler Cirrus and Chevrolet CavalierThe Chevrolet Cavalier was Chevrolet's version of the compact General Motors J-body along with the Cadillac Cimarron, Pontiac Sunbird (later renamed Sunfire), Oldsmobile Firenza and Buick Skyhawk in the US; Opel Ascona and Vauxhall Cavalier in Europe; Hol would be examples. The term has also been adopted to describe smaller examples of the popular sport utility vehicleA sport utility vehicle SUV or off-roader is a vehicle that combines the load-hauling and passenger-carrying capacity of a large station wagon or minivan with features designed for off-road driving. In more recent years, the term has also grown to encompas, such as the Ford EscapeFord Motor Company's Escape debuted in 2001 as an entry level SUV, priced below the Ford Explorer. It was jointly developed with Mazda, which Ford owns a controlling interest in, and is also sold as the Mazda Tribute and, in Europe, as the Ford Maverick.. Compact sport utility vehicles are sometimes called cute-utes.
This term is not commonly used in EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Se, where vehicles tend to be smaller and use a different size class system.