>>279709304
>It's depressing to watch the ongoing "arms race" in the US when it comes to car sizes. It's absolutely nuts how large they're making them these days, and it's sold with the most manipulative advertising, making use of people's fears and insecurities.
After the gas crises of the '70s, American consumers started moving more towards smaller and more fuel-efficient cars and because the big American auto manufacturers didn't offer those they were being imported from Europe and Japan. When the auto manufacturers tried to make efficient domestic cars, the cars they made were absolutely atrocious and they lost even more market share. To prevent these auto manufacturers from going under, a standard called CAFE was introduced but it was rigged; emissions standards aren't regulated on a per-mile basis but increase progressively via esoteric bullshit based on the legal classification of the vehicle, the type and dimensions of the engine, a few other things, and, most importantly for this discussion, its footprint on the ground and the emissions per gallon. So basically the end result is that you can just make your vehicles bigger to get around making them more fuel-efficient; IIRC a truck the size of a first-generation Tacoma would have to get 45+ mpg to be sold in the US today and a motor that gets 10MPG while putting out 10 units of pollution per gallon of fuel is considered less polluting than a motor that gets 50MPG while putting out 11 units of polution per gallon of fuel.
All that being said, American consumers have always been attached to big cars for a number of reasons both practical and otherwise.
