I have been living is Europe for about a year now and I always hear "oh American cars are so stupid and big". I never really understood this. When I lived in Canada I would never hear a North American saying how superior their cars are to the European cars. Do Europeans recognize the vastly different driving conditions between the two continents? Can someone explain this?
Ummm.... i never met somebody that sayd that its more like the older cars are just draining fuel like nothing else and there handling is realy spongy... only thing i hate are the people that think hotrodding every nice old car is a good thing... or in movies if they blow up like good old mustangs or cobras
yeah, the new mustang is horrible. but (obviously) im in america, and i like both american and some of the european cars. i dont see what the big deal is.
Here in the UK, it's very rare to see any American brand (unless you're counting the UK branch of Ford). I think the problem is there's the common conception that American cars are big, wasteful and ugly. And there's also the fact that a lot of Europe doesn't like the USA.
Over here most people I know see European cars as small, weak, and ugly. I haven't personally met many people who don't like Europe or the folks who live there though.
I think that when Europeans say they don't like American cars, it's more to do with practicality terms... in reality we all want a big car that makes lots of noise with... flames and shit. But we Europeans are restricted from having them for many reasons. (just my opinion. I really like American muscle cars but i will never be able to afford to run one in Europe, plus i also like a lot of European cars).
American "cars" aren't really overly big. They can be quite small actually. There aren't any bigger than a lot of European cars. An average American car is the size of a Volvo or BMW. Sure we have our trucks, but they aren't big just to be big (most of them). Pickup trucks, at least around here, are very useful. I personally have a truck and it is amazing. The only time I notice it being too big is when trying to park in parking lots. A lot of them don't have enough space to pull in one time. It's a lot of back-and-forth to get it into a spot. As for American cars being ugly, well... it depends. All the nice old muscle cars are beautiful, but once you hit the late 80's through the 90's it gets REALLY bad. I swear (nearly) every car company hired a 3 year-old Helen Keller to design their cars. But now the cars are looking good again. Although the new Mustang is balls-to-the-wall ugly.
The impracticality of them? The few genuine american cars here (ignoring the euro arm of ford who's designs are gradually leaking back stateside) have reputations for having massive fuel guzzling engines which dont perform aswell as engines with much lower displacements and better economies. They also have reputations for handling poorly. End result is that they have little that is likeable about them beyond cosmetics. There is also the stereotype that most people owning SUV's and trucks etc probably never see ground that our very own ibishu covet can't handle just aswell. But one of the people I heard saying this drives a Land Rover Discovery, parks it on her driveway which is normal tarmac and lines up directly with the tarmac road which stays a tarmac road the whole way through the town to where she works where it gets parked in a tarmac carpark, therefore she needs hypocrite tattooing across her head. I don't hate them. Its just I would never get one. The cars which don't fit the stereotype we have direct equivalents of that arent any better or worse so why bother importing what we already have? - - - Updated - - - Glad I'm not the only one to think that. Ignoring my existing post, I do think the classic mustang is a beauty to behold. Then they ruined it.
The thing about a truck and SUV isn't necessarily for leaving your typical tarmac roads. I have a boat that I need to tow,or 1.5 tons of dirt/gravel/mulch to haul. A car simply cannot do it. Plus a lot of SUV's offer AWD and trucks 4WD. Where I live we get a lot of ice and snow. The ground clearances and AWD is a lot safer and prevents getting stuck. Most SUV's nowadays have equal or better MPG than a car and offer more space and nicer features than a car has to offer.
Not a UK spec they don't. Cars here regularly achieve 40-50mpg or better whereas SUV's you get lucky with 20-30. My car gets 50 to the gallon, my mums 4wd gets under 15. She has a 4wd because a) we live on a farm and b) its a family of 7 people and every single people carrier we looked at had the luggage capacity to carry a pair of sunglasses and thats about it. Her mitsibushi shogun fits 7 people including 2 in car seats + push chair (which we no longer require) + changing bag + shopping etc. Now that I drive though and not everyone tends to go out at once anymore we are looking at downgrading. Its so expensive for her to run her vehicle that she often ends up borrowing mine if she can, its cheaper in theory until she decides ramming a lexus is a good idea.... - - - Updated - - - Oh, moving dirt: Indestructable.
Aside from the newer hybrids, around here most cars don't get that great of mpg. Our minivan does 19 city and 21 highway and my dad's mini cooper averages 33 mpg (which is actually pretty good). My truck gets a measly 12 mpg. Edit: Both our trucks haul dirt well, but at least mine looks gorgeous while doing it Such a beautiful truck. I just wish the rocker panels weren't so badly rusted.
Trucks are normally used for carrying heavy and large loads that you couldn't use a car for, not off-road driving(although with some modification many can be used for that).
Yeah my truck has the optional Z71 package on it so it comes with a skid plate underneath and a small lift. I can and have used it for light off-roading, but anything serious would require a better lift kit.
We would use a van for that most of the time. Rare to see a pickup for work, pickup transits excluded as they appear everywhere. The transit seems to be the backbone of britain
I'm assuming by van you mean something like an H15. Van's in the U.S. are mostly used as utility vehicles that need to store a lot of equipment, but don't need a lot of towing/hauling capabilities nor the ability to leave the road. Vans are often connected to plumbing, cable, carpet cleaners, etc... companies. While trucks are often used by roofing, farming, lawn care, etc.. companies that need to tow trailers with mowers and equipment or easy access to the truck bed. Plus driving a rusty old truck makes you look cool, not like a 60 year old pedophile.
Mercedes sprinters are fairly common: Will take a pretty large load. Got high, low and medium roof options for the venerable ford transit as well as multiple wheelbase options and even choice of front, rear or all wheel drive in certain configurations (but rear is most common) There are other options for regular vans of course but these were the 2 that came to mind first because they are the most common. Peugeot and citroen etc. The H15 is on the smaller end though. For dirt you get the pickup variant of the transit I already linked. You do sometimes see trucks here but commercially the transit just seems to have taken off as the work vehicle of choice, tons of variants and soaks up any abuse. Various lengths and widths available from factory, available in front rear or all wheel drive (unless you go for duallies on the rear in which case rear is only option), with or without dump functionality and even variants which dump to the sides instead of behind, crew cab variants too etc. Also get transits configured more like the H15 cabster with a cargo box, chiller unit variants, recovery etc. H15 and transit are fairly alike I guess if they added more H15 variants (multiple DAE support should give that a real hand). We even get motorhome and minibus variants. Transit pickups appear on construction sites left right and centre aswell as the regular van too. Mercedes sprinters seem very popular with delivery companies, UPS, fedex and DHL all use them. Then there are the usages you already mention. Did some work for a landscape garner working out of a pickup transit. I think I have seen maybe 3 companies in the area that actually use pickup trucks which are not the transit variant I already linked a few posts back. And one of those is with an aftermarket bed much like the one fitted to the above transit. One is a landscape gardening company, one of the others was a tree surgeons and the other has a construction company logo plastered on it but I havent ever seen so much as a pebble in the back of it, always appears empty from eye level, doesnt mean it is empty of course, not like I've tried looking over into the bed, just means whatever is in there is low enough to not be visible from eye level when I'm driving or walking by.
I thought we had Mercedes Sprinters here in the US? And we have our own version of the Ford van. Anyway, I just Googled the 2015 Mustang. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING? US muscle cars were pretty nice until the 70s when the government went crazy with economy and safety restrictions. That's when we really started importing cars.
