The second generation Soul was Kia's best selling vehicle in the U.S., and for Honda the Fit was their third best seller behind the CR-V and Civic. The issue wasn't that people weren't buying them. They absolutely were. The issue was that dealer allocations kept getting lower and lower as the manufacturers pushed CUVs and SUVs more and more after 2006. 2008 delayed that shift since big SUVs were seen as icons of the crash, but by 2011 the shift resumed. CAFE standards made it infeasible to sell the smaller cars because their development and testing was more expensive thanks to the footprint rule. Since the U.S. was the second largest market behind China and China was already overcrowded in the A and B segments, the moment that the U.S. stopped being enough of a profit center (around 2014) those segments got axed. When they deemed it too narrow in profits for the C segment (around 2018) that also got axed. Honda and Toyota are the only holdouts with the Civic and Corolla because Europe and Asia love the things, and while those two markets are only 30% of the size of the U.S. in terms of sales per year that's still big enough to justify keeping it around. Especially as the Civic now has no competition except the Corolla in the U.S. since Ford, GM, Stellantis, Nissan, Hyundai, Geely, and Tata all abandoned hatchbacks, coupes, and sedans. It's all down to loopholes and perverse incentives betraying the buying public once again.

i call bollocks. the Honda Fit sold like hotcakes and the Civic and Corolla continue to be ubiquitous .

margins and market incentives aren't there for small vehicles. same reason that things like clothes are bifurcated into either bottom-barrel fast-fashion or $1000 button ups.