Those of you that grew up in the 70's with those cars and later inherited the cars to drive in the 80's lived through a special kind of hell. My high school parking lot was littered with their corpses and kept the local tow guys in business.
Although I am squarely in the time period, my brother and I dodged a bullet on that one:
Mom drove a 73' Cadillac Sedan De Ville and dad had a '75 Ford Explorer truck ( Dad is a Ford man but always got the shitty colors because they cost less at the end of season-I guess. The '75 was oxidizing brown with orange, tan, black, almost red and white striping and looked like Sark's pregame suit from TCU.)
Any way, the late 70's gas price increase hit and they downsized to a '79 Mazda Station wagon (the car my brother and I would learn to drive on) and a -you guessed it-brown -Ford Courrier pick up.
We eventually picked up an 83' Toyota Tercel for my brother and I and dad got rid of the Courrier when gas prices receded. Mom got a '84 Lincoln Town Car. Dad got another Big Ford Truck in another shitty color.
In college we replace Mazda wagon with brand new '86 Mazda B2000 bench seater with a standard which I ended up selling in 1997 to one of my employees and that truck is still working a ranch in Durango, Mexico.
My dad's trucks were truly hideous. I can remember a metallic turquoise green/blue with tan detailing and a metallic light brown with red detailing.
Those late 70's early 80's imports were small with small engines. I remember when I bought my first walk behind concrete saw and the engine was bigger than any of the the ones in my learner cars, but not by much, but then again it was a just a saw.