A car’s first year on the market often dictates its future. A slow-seller like the Dodge Hornet, introduced as a compliance car, might be canceled almost immediately, while a winner, like the Toyota RAV4, can stick around for decades. Then there are cars like the Toyota Echo, a budget-priced, Millennium-era compact that sold 50,000 units in its first model year, but never made it out of the ’00s.
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