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The amazing shrinking act will continue through the early 1980s. "Unless some miracle occurs in material or technology," says William Luneburg, the outspoken president of American Motors, "the only thing we can do to increase mileage to these high levels [i.e., the government-ordered 27.5 m.p.g. by 1985] is to take the size of the cars down." By the early 1980s, all the current car classifications—from luxury car down to subcompact—will almost certainly describe autos one category smaller than now. A few very big cars will probably always be around to indulge the ostentatious or the nostalgic. But within a decade, the obituary of the fin-festooned living room on wheels, so often written prematurely during the oil embargo of 1973, probably will finally become fact.