Why Civic's and other 4 cylinder Japanese Cars

I am not that old, (31) and when I was in high school, people used to build V-8's. Ranging from Charger's, Baracuda's, old and new Mustang's, especially the lx 5.0. Why do kids today try to do so much with so little. There is no torque coming out of the high reving 4 bangers, so getting out of the hole isn't optimal. The most non NOS horsepower you can reach is 230 or so. Why not build out a older mustang that has a solid base to work from? What happened to muscle cars and big engines? I used to love watching the 5 liter mustangs go up against the 60's muscle cars. Just wondering, please don't flame.