P-G, I love ya' like a brother but in what alternative reality was the K-car even "decent?" LOL.....At best you have to give the Mopar boys an "atta' boy" for the attempt but the actual product was several notches downscale from "Totally Pathetic."
Where all of them went wrong was back in the late 50's and early 60's when they put so little real effort into the small car program. The Falcon, Corvair, Dart/Valiant models were all pretty poor but the needed to hang in with them and stay te course, so to speak. The Japanese cars of the same era were complete trash and damn near useless in this country, but they DID work on them and pretty soon............and here we are.
All of them though.....the world over........NONE have heavily invested in true alternate fuel vehicles that are solutions and not just stopgap models.