What if you could have your big station wagon without trying to force thirty or so other people into an econobox? Because that's the tradeoff.

That's not the only possible tradeoff. For the manufacturers, they were faced with the choice of: figure out how to make even our big vehicles more fuel efficient; or take advantage of a huge loophole in the regulations and simply make something that isn't covered by it.

If that loophole hadn't been big enough to drive a Cadilac Esplenade throught, they might have pursued the original goal of the legislation.