Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this)
What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.
Only 20 years ago used to be the "hairdresser car" meant a tiny little sporty coupe or convertible like a miata. I guess the marketing changed and cultivated a new generation with a new mindset.
Why does designing cars for women mean we need to turn them into main battle tanks? That's a false dichotomy. Women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, just as female pedestrians are just as vulnerable as male pedestrians.
For a while, women in cars were more vulnerable than men in cars, in part because crash test dummies were sized to typical male proportions, and cars are built to pass crash tests rather than be as safe as possible for all occupants while still passing crash tests. This sometimes led to things like airbags being placed in locations that worked great for average height men but not as well for average height women.
I don't know if it's fair to say that women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, the same goes for the pedestrian argument.
It seems like you're using "women" as a proxy for "smaller people". Children and small-statured men are just vulnerable as women in crashes. Regardless, we now do crash tests with a variety of body types.
A 5-foot man is just as vulnerable when being hit by a car as a 5-foot woman, and obviously children are much more vulnerable than grown women when being hit by giant vehicles.
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Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this)
What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.