A "dinky", "small-displacement", "underpowered" European or Japanese sports car will do the same job. There are many replacements for displacement. The American preference for big, heavy vehicles with big, heavy engines is just aesthetic.
You can't get the sort of low end torque with a turbocharged i4 that you can with a large displacement V8 even if they both have the same peak horsepower. More low end torque give a better throttle response and different characteristics than more high revving engines.