US car companies make vehicles that their customer want to buy. The US customer, and their needs, are different to their European or Asian contemporaries. Foreign manufacturers such as Honda, Nissan and Toyota make comparable cars to their US manufacturer counterparts. All of them are horrid in my opinion.
Aside from the aesthetics, you need to factor in other things :
o Distances travelled by US drivers tend to be much longer than ours. o The weather conditions are often very different. o The average size of the people are often very much bigger. o Gasoline is significantly cheaper.
A friend of mine from Calgary, who's extremely environmentally conscious, drives a JEEP because a Prius just won't work for him. He gave it a good try and was very upset about having to hand the thing back... it spent pretty much all of its time on gas [so he was hauling batteries with a petrol engine], wouldn't handle the harsh winters they have, and won't go off road... something he has to do every day.
So again, its not as simple as it appears... and we haven't even opened the discussion on road haulage yet.
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