They killed it because they could make more money selling larger vehicles, because people would be willing to pay more for larger vehicles. If they wanted to get the same profit margin on a Fiesta, it would never worked because nobody would have bought them.

Anyway, one thing that is definitely true is that our Mad Max roadways push people into bigger and bigger cars just to feel safer from the bigger and bigger cars, and this after decades of being chased off bikes and sneakers because cars make every form of transit worse. That's a failure of regulation, 100%.