Ted's the man! I may even have to go see him at Thunder in the Rockies Labor Day Event that's coming to town.
As far as little, high mileage cars, you folks ever look at the street layout in Europe or Japanese cities? There's hardly room to park a bike let alone a F-350. When US population density gets as bad as those cities, in other words when there is no suburbs just high rises, gas prices reach 7 to 10/gal the necessity and demand for the little compacts will get the results.
I'm no historian( watch some History Channel
) but it seems to me that most of the "Great Empires" fell because they conquered and began to tax or extort monies from the locals. Problem was they kept expanding leaving only small contengients of true Romans, Spainish, French behind. They ended up getting spread to thin and then the conquered figured out that they only had to take out the local garrison to reclaim their land. This is probably a gross over simplification of reality, but it appears to be the end result.
I may be mistaken but most of the folks, our ancestors, in the New World at the time of the revolution were Europes outcasts and oppressed regardless of nationality or the children of same. It was in the best interest of both France and Germany to assist anyone who could twist the thorn in the "Big Dogs' (England)"
paw and create a new ally for the future and they didn't want those folks moving to Paris or Berlin if the New World became unattractive due to British rule.