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Why do Europena / Japanese car makers have a small engine mindset while American's have a big engine mindset?

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Originally posted by: tcsenter
they don't/can't police the world and suck up half the world's export of dino oil, so gas is more expensive?
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Europe benefits from the same stable and competitive global oil prices the United States does, and from risks and costs rarely shouldered by Europe I might add. The higher cost of fuel in Europe has absolutely nothing to do with the price of oil.

Not a single European country offers to pay more than the global market price of oil out of altruistic concern or to avoid conflict with their ostensibly higher 'principles'.
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No, neither the Euro countries nor the Asian, esp. Japan, pay more per barrell than we in the U.S do for oil. But outside of Britian, there are no countries that have their own reserves of oil. They have to buy every drop they use, unlike the U.S. They therefore tax the crap out of fuel to encourage voluntary conservation.

Another tact, as mentioned before, is to tax heavily engines over a certain size. Italy, for instance, begins taxing at engines over one liter in size and the tax scale jumps radically for every half-liter of size after that.

Add to the mix cities whose streets were designed initially around horse-drawn carts and bigger cars aren't the "ticket" there as they are here.
 
Mindset carried over from generation to generation. Mix of lots of things.

Probably the biggest component of the trend I'd guess would be post WWII. Lot of servicemen coming home right then with money in their pockets and no ties. They'd just won a war, their country and it's infrastructure was intact, they were looking to buy a car and go find someone to make six kids with. In Europe it was a bit bleaker, same with Japan. Only two to three generations removed from that time. Grandpa fought the krauts, came home, bought an Oldsmobile. Dad grew up riding around in that Olds, when it was his time to buy a car a Pontiac was smaller and sportier. Sportier anyway. All the while the domestic auto industry was building large cars, kids were riding in large cars, being conditioned to the size and characteristics of large cars. Up until the SUV mania the trend was towards ever smaller cars with smaller engines.

There's also the component of America tending to be more spread out. Even if the daily commute for a worker here wasn't much longer than in Europe, the roadtrip was. American families tended to spread out moving from one town to the next with marriages, job changes. Trips to see them were longer so a larger more comfortable car were preferred.

While Europe was rebuilding it's infrastrure, the US was building a lot from scratch. Instead of established roads that snaked through and around villages since the Romans put down cobblestones like many roads in Europe, wide, straight roads were layed down here. The grandest being the Interstate system of the 1950's. The great american roadtrip was invented, as was the cross country family vacation that decades later earned Chevy Chase a lot of money in a goofy movie.

So a lot of it was infrastructure, rebuilding vs starting new. Look at internet access and speeds, or better yet cell phones. America is tied down by infrastructure here. Same way we as a nation are slow to give up the wired telephone Europe was slow to straighten it's roads. Countries that never had a true telephone grid can switch to cell phones virtually overnight. Also don't have the downside economic factors to leaving behind a grid or pressure and interferrence from those running it.

So - post WWII mindset. Infrastructure. There's two. Both apply to consumers and auto makers. Then there's the cultural phenomenon that happened where Americans fell in love with their cars. It's a mix of status/transportation everywhere, but to the American consumer the ratio is skewed towards status. Which I think explains the SUV craze as well as anything.

Add to that the price of gas, the cultural tendancies...well, it's not just one thing. Nobody's wrong here, it's all these factors working together.
 
But outside of Britian, there are no countries that have their own reserves of oil. They have to buy every drop they use, unlike the U.S. They therefore tax the crap out of fuel to encourage voluntary conservation.
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They tax gas for environmental reasons, not because they have to import all their oil. Even the US has to import 2/3 of its oil.
 
Originally posted by: Eli


As for your question, the answer, at least for the Japanese side of things, is efficiency. It's almost cultural over there, you know what I mean. It just makes sense to them to build compact, efficient engines.
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There's an interesting explanation for that, and for why the Japanese build cars (and other things) the way they do and why it differs from Americans.

In the early days, the Japanese had VERY little resources yet they had a lot of skilled manpower. America was the opposite. They had tons of resources but they did not as many engineers/etc.. So what did the Americans do? They simplified each task related to building cars so anyone could do it. This is now the production line came about. And they had a lot of resources, so they could have some slack.

The Japanese on the other hand, had very little resources. Which meant they could had to conserve everything. They however had lots of skilled people. So they formed little groups. Each group had a worker, manager, engineer, etc.. so that way if there was a problem it could be fixed on the spot. As opposed to the Ford-Taylor system, where the assembly line worker had no control over making any changes.

This is why they rate efficiency so highly. It's because that's in their industrial nature. They didnt' have much to begin with, so they had to be highly efficient in order to survive.

I'm sure I'm missing something to add to this, but this is the general idea.
 
Americans are consumption whores, covering it up with things like "safety" and "comfort".
rolleye.gif
 
Originally posted by: mAdD INDIAN
Also in some countries, like UK, someone with their learner's license can only drive a car upto a certain engine displacement.
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That's a good idea. I think there should be different classes of licences based on HP and size. Just because you can handle a Geo Metro, doesn't mean you can handle an Excursion.

Obviously larger/more powerful vehicles would have much harder tests.
 
Your Japanese counterparts live in rabbit hutches. Guess that makes you a consumption whore by comparison, eh?
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As an American, yes. Thing is, I'm not apathetic to the situation like most Americans are. The MAJORITY of Americans don't care, and justify it by by either saying that's how american society works, or that they only live once and they want to be fat and comfortable, something along thoes lines.
The majority is the only thing that matters though right?

The total land area of Japan is 377, 700 sq km. (37,770,000 ha) (habitable land is equal to 125,500 sq km or 12,550,000 ha, approximately 33% of the total land).
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Japan has ~130million in an area 64 times smaller than America.
For comparison, America has a population of ~375million, with a land area of 9,365,000 Sq. Miles (24,256,000 Sq. Km).

The World 57,308,738 Sq. Miles (148,429,000 Sq. Km) 100%
Asia (plus the Middle East) 17,212,000 Sq. Miles (44,579,000 Sq. Km) 30.0%
Africa 11,608,000 Sq. Miles (30,065,000 Sq. Km) 20.3%
North America 9,365,000 Sq. Miles (24,256,000 Sq. Km) 16.3%
South America 6,880,000 Sq. Miles (17,819,000 Sq. Km) 8.9%
Antarctica 5,100,000 Sq. Miles (13,209,000 Sq. Km) 8.9%
Europe 3,837,000 Sq. Miles (9,938,000 Sq. Km) 6.7%
Australia (plus Oceania) 2,968,000 Sq. Miles (7,687,000 Sq. Km) 5.2%

What's your point? Do they really have a choice on how to live? Not really.
I personally try to limit my consumption as much as possible.
 
"What's your point? Do they really have a choice on how to live? Not really.
I personally try to limit my consumption as much as possible. "

Point is, you're a fvcking hypocrite! We're supposed to drive go-karts, because the rest of the world does (supposedly for conservation reasons
rolleye.gif
), yet you choose to live in a huge house in comparison to what they do, using lots of natural resources to keep it up.

It's by necessity they live in rabbit hutches, NOT conservation mindedness. It's because of overbearing taxes that Europeans drive eensie-mobiles, NOT conservation mindedness.
 
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
That's a good idea. I think there should be different classes of licences based on HP and size. Just because you can handle a Geo Metro, doesn't mean you can handle an Excursion.

Obviously larger/more powerful vehicles would have much harder tests.
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Don't know what to think about that. I started driving at 13 (training for my school permit at 14. Strangely enough I couldn't take driver's ed until I'd already been driving two years) and my first vehicles to drive were 3/4 ton pickups and V8 cars. Ok, and a semi that I didn't exactly have a license to operate, but hey, it was a good paying summer job for a fifteen year old. My daily driver these days is a Geo Metro. It's a lot more challenging to drive a Metro in traffic or down the interstate than a larger vehicle with more power. I can cut people off or speed just as well as I could in an Excursion, just won't leave as big a dent in whatever I hit. On the other side, it's a lot easier for me to get into bad situations with my outmatched little car. For an inexperienced driver it'd be a significant safety concern.

Might cut back on hotrodding for a small percentage, but then again aren't "ricers" the favorite street racers now? Have to restrict modifications too if it's about restricting people to slow accelerating vehicles (that old semi didn't accelerate for diddly, btw) or is it about mass?

You can be a bad driver in anything. I don't really see the advantage to the restriction. Tougher licenses I'm all for though. Always said my kid, should I ever have one, would drive a station wagon with whitewalls. Hopefully they'd be ok if they did get into an accident and it'd be uncool enough that they wouldn't be tempted to show off.
 
Originally posted by: tomwolfman
americans can go into iraq shoot the place up and get free oil whereas we gotta pay for it
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rolleye.gif


I award you no points for your uninspired weak attempt at a troll/threadcrap, you may now crawl back under the rock from whence you came, kthxbye.

- M4H
 
Originally posted by: tomwolfman
americans can go into iraq shoot the place up and get free oil whereas we gotta pay for it
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Uh huh. No.

Japanese have an "efficient" type of engineering which is reflective of its culture, and Americans like bigger and faster.
 
did anyone ever read my earlier post or McCarthy's post?

It outlined some valid points and reasoning as to why the Japanese do things the way they do..and Americans do things their way.

You know guys, sometimes long posts actually have valid content that might just be interesting.
 
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