It's like the whole of Japan just decided to kill all the interesting or fun cars they made.

Toyota put out the Scion badge for the young'uns, marketing cars the same way Texas Instruments markets calculators: Let's sell replaceable colored face plates at $20 a pop, $30 for the pink ones. They were designed to last 5 years and the brand was discontinued like 7 years ago now. There are no more Scions in the world. Meanwhile the Toyota marque went full diaper bag. The Celica, Supra, MR2, all gone never to return, in their place were minivans with built-in vacuums and other 2000 pound self-propelled diaper bags. If they made a 2-door Corolla, they would have discontinued it. And for the folks who sit and watch the Weather Channel while waiting to die, one of the dull colored unnamed loafers on the Lexus lot is waiting for you.

Honda did basically the same thing at the same time though they weren't as Japanese about it; they kept making an Accord with a spoiler on it.

Subaru and Mitsubishi both kind of faded into the background to the point you forget they ever existed and Isuzu and Suzuki both actually stopped making cars for the North American market.

And the Koreans didn't really rise up to fill the gap left by the Japanese.