Well!!! This is your opinion. Steermatic was one car that people (in Pakistan) misunderstood first and when it was taken out from production - it got more and more popular. It gained appreciation quite after its production was stopped.
Biggest problem with Steermatic was it's CVT transmission's incompatibility with CNG. Otherwise, it was a joy and fun car. In India, they had 1.5L with same engine in manual transmission - and it has been a biggest hit - much popular with young drivers.
Atlas is not using CVT either in CIVIC or in new Honda CITY. I suspect that if they launched 1.5L now - it will be more successful than Steermatic (since there is no EXI version for the same segment of customers). The iVTEC version of CIVIC with Automatic Transmission costs around 1.784M - so anything in the range of 1.575M will have some customers....