They were not called that “for a brief moment” it’s been used to put down import tuner cars for decades by people who’d rather drive mustangs and camaros. It was meant to put down:

• small displacement import cars
• tuned import cars
• (and this one i remember cause it wasnt that long ago) cars with cheap or considered tacky modifications that often only alluded to performance modification.

It’s so obviously loaded with racist connotation that I dont know why you’d want to defend it so badly.

Also it’s not two manufacturers. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mistubishi were all putting out sporty cars that were getting performance numbers rivaling v8 block american cars at the time

It was not a brief moment, it's still used that way to this day in modern car culture.