When I was in france last year I noticed how almost everyone prefers tiny cars to deal with the tiny streets and tiny garages. I saw one Ford pickup truck, the entire time I was thereand it was being driven by Russian tourists.
#andsoitbegins because American built cars wouldn't meet EU regulations UNLESS the EU public agreed to the same lax regulations the USA has & the further deregulation Trump "The Appeaser", Musk "The Ketamine King" & RFK "Dr. Mengele" want 2 impose.
We, the Europeans, say
"Thanks, BUT NO, THANKS!"
also american cars have a pretty big reputation IN AMERICA for being unreliable?? i can’t even tell you how many CIS HET WHITE MEN (left and right) throughout my life as a woman have told me to “buy toyota or honda for reliability” on the road as a young woman and mother.
The statement is also nonsense if anyone questions it. Europe has Opel and Vauxhall and a ton of Ford Foci, while the USA has a ton of Japanese brands made domestically in the USA.
“Stellantis N.V. is a multinational automotive manufacturing company formed from the merger in 2021 of the Italian–American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group.”
“Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automobile manufacturer”
My mom is from Detroit and my dad is a buy local conservative patriot, and they haven't bought an American car since the Chevrolet Lumina in 1990. My dad bought one Toyota and they never looked back.
so many camaros. i see enough Nissan and Toyota trucks to know they are willing to compromise on that, but when they buy their toys it's usually Ford Dodge or Chevy
Yeah feels like young men stopped buying tuner cars? You can get an simply irresponsible amount of horsepower for comparably little money if you buy a Camaro or Challenger or Mustang.
when Chrysler got bought by Fiat we had a hell of a time convincing the Italians that "relax in a clean, comfortable lounge drinking good espresso" was not the American auto mechanic experience and they couldn't expect our customers to tolerate it multiple times a year
like quite literally meetings where they were like "I don't understand why it's a problem the transmission has a 10% failure rate because they can just go to the shop if they get a bad one???"
Ford UK and Ford US might as well be totally independent countries, looking at their product catalogs over the years. The overlap is surprisingly small.
Only one of them is a British status symbol, though. (I am going to elide the difference between range and other land rovers but it applies to both, within different domains)
Agreed. Classic Jeeps will always find a market though.
All the other models that they are turning into crossovers and family vehicles are painfully shit, but the classic Jeep is a classic for a reason. They are damn good.
To a certain extent. Most vehicles produced by Jeep are janky as hell. They seem to rust badly too. But the classic Jeep will always be a design icon and they are still great.
Japanese cars are vastly more reliable and require less maintenance and cost to operate. It wouldn’t matter where in the world I lived, I will always stick with them. (Mainly Honda and Toyota). You couldn’t pay me to buy one of our cars.
and hell, it's good business for the japanese companies; remembering being told by my tour guide in osaka that even though japanese love cars, the streets are narrow everywhere there lol
favorite vw story remains a friend’s mom in spain. think it was a rabbit, maybe a golf. when you depressed, the radio would cut out and i was just like “????”
My sister had a Passat and it was so weird. Her husband just told her finally to take it to the dealer because everything was weird. And he does like most of their car maintenance.
Is Ford not an American car company? Plenty of Fords in Europe.
Just smaller, more efficient ones built to higher EU safety standards rather than gas-guzzling pedestrian killers.
There are plenty of cities and motorways that could cope with an F-150 and lots of people like builders and gardeners who buy pick-ups. But the road tax and petrol costs of running a monstrosity like that would be horrific.
Better to buy a Toyota pick-up instead.
Yeah, and they had a great run of making great cars all by themselves! Sierra, Capri (the European Mustang), Escort, Transit, Fiesta, Granada, Cortina, Mondeo, and the original Focus were all designed and manufactured by Ford Europe. Coincidentally almost none of them were ever sold in the US.
Wait Ford of Europe is owned by…Ford US. It’s not a separate organization, just a subsidiary. So every sale of a European Ford benefits Ford the company that is based in the US
This is like saying that every Jeep sold in the US benefits a company that is based in the EU because Stellantis' headquarters are in the Netherland. Ford Europe's car are mostly designed and manufactured entirely in Europe.
There are some exceptions, but most of those are still built close by in Turkey. Only Mustangs are imported from North America, with the EV version coming from Mexico and the regular petrol being the only one to come from the US, but it accounts for very few sales in European markets.
1. GM, Ford, and Stellantis all have multiple marques and models that are popular in Europe.
2. In markets where subcompacts and minicompacts have the largest market share the Euro and Japanese makers just have better offerings in those ranges.
“we, the republican party, cannot allow people’s consumption to result from their choices in what one might call a ‘free market’, the government must make those choices for them, thank you and no questions at this time.”
That's capitalism. Chevrolet, Cadillac, Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep were all sold in Europe at one point. Or at least, they tried. No one bought them other than Jeeps. As a result, Jeeps are the only ones sold here.
Ford doesn't count. Ford of Europe is completely different to the Ford of America.
also probably has something to do with vehicle size. anyone who has ever left a major european city would know many roads could not support two F-150s or Suburbans passing each other.
Thinking about my trip to Dublin and how I drove to other major cities. I did it in some Kia rollerskate looking car. Can't imagine doing it in an SUV.
But the Stephen Miller's of the world don't have this type of awareness.
Yup. Even when pickups rose in popularity in the 2010s here (UK) for what I believe was business tax reasons, it was that type of pickup. I don't think the F-150 is even legal here (and the Swastitruck certainly isn't). The British trope for fascism-curious blue-collar types is "white van man"
I've seen plenty roads and drives too narrow for ONE of those to fit through. to say nothing of the blindspots. Those just aren't vehicles meant for anything except the wide open
Size isn't the issue. It's the awful build quality and reliability. Other than the trucks and full size SUVs, American cars are the same size as European cars. A Chevrolet Malibu is near enough the same size as a BMW 5 series
It might also be relevant that US car companies put most of their effort for decades into enormous, low-efficiency cars that only compete well if the government subsidizes the shit out of roads, parking, and fuel.
(yes, Ford and GM do sell smaller cars abroad, but these aren't their focus)
Sure, they are here. They aren't in Europe. My point is that this isn't due to trade policy. It's due to factors like dirt cheap gas, wide roads and enormous free parking spaces.
Sure, we’re not disagreeing. My big point is that fully-assembled cars are inherently not an ideal export good (large heavy irregular boxes of air with fragile exteriors) and so the tendency has always been towards regionalized final assembly that reflects local markets.
Japan doesn't charge a tariff on imported cars from the United States. They charge a 10% on Japanese cars, so we are actually at a 10% price advantage. The fact is, Japanese don't like big cars with big engines. We do not build what they like. That is a choice American car makers opted for long ago
Europeans don't like panel gaps you can fit your hand inside, engines that guzzle fuel, vehicles that clap out after 150,000 Km, or designs that look like they were copied from a 12 year old's doodle pad.
Oh and we won't rebadge a Daewoo so we can pretend it was all our own work.
At least we can all come together and unite in laughing at the guy who can't fathom why Europeans, for their tiny European streets, don't buy many huge American vehicles made for massive American roads in big ol' USA.
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And now nothing like it exists, definitely not domestic. Closest is maybe a GR Corolla? Or a GR Yaris if Americans had good enough taste to get that
We, the Europeans, say
"Thanks, BUT NO, THANKS!"
I walked past a Ford F150 Raptor in a parking lot, it completely obscured the Rivian R1S (a full size SUV!) beside it
“Stellantis N.V. is a multinational automotive manufacturing company formed from the merger in 2021 of the Italian–American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and the French PSA Group.”
“Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automobile manufacturer”
Other than Tesla, and the Jeep Gladiator pickup (which nobody buys-- I think I've seen one on the road once, ever), it's all Japanese and one VW model
Also very popular, though not anymore: Tesla
All the other models that they are turning into crossovers and family vehicles are painfully shit, but the classic Jeep is a classic for a reason. They are damn good.
It's not like they're forcing us to buy Japanese made cars or anything.
Also, I don't think you could drive a Ford F150 on most Japanese roads. I had enough trouble in my little Honda Civic.
But god do they appreciate a hatchback
I thought lesbians just got an island, not a continent
also finding a headlight bulb for a 1997 Jetta was a whole odyssey
Just smaller, more efficient ones built to higher EU safety standards rather than gas-guzzling pedestrian killers.
Better to buy a Toyota pick-up instead.
https://youtu.be/6zx5V9Z4ed0
He’s a giant hypocrite.
1. GM, Ford, and Stellantis all have multiple marques and models that are popular in Europe.
2. In markets where subcompacts and minicompacts have the largest market share the Euro and Japanese makers just have better offerings in those ranges.
Ford doesn't count. Ford of Europe is completely different to the Ford of America.
But the Stephen Miller's of the world don't have this type of awareness.
One lane roads can be ok, but when a local passes you going 100km on one that has a 500-year old stone wall on either side of the road its terrifying.
Even tradesman (who actually need the cargo room) prefer vans.
My neighbor's Toyota was made in San Antonio.
(yes, Ford and GM do sell smaller cars abroad, but these aren't their focus)
which evaporated once gas prices dropped, because all of the margins are in big SUVs and trucks.
Oh and we won't rebadge a Daewoo so we can pretend it was all our own work.