I don’t believe it. It’s a line that is pushed by PR in the car industry but if anything, except for cops and car rental companies, American think buying a sedan is like putting their hand in a toilet.
Americans buy a lot of SUVs and they are all hatchbacks!
I think it comes down to profit. Eliminate all the base models, keep moving bigger and more "luxury". You may sell fewer cars but the profit margins are fatter. Jack up an economy hatchback, bloat it few inches and slap in some heated seats and a big screen. Offer AWD, now it's a "crossover" you can charge $5000+ more for worse fuel economy.
Honda for example, drops the Fit hatchback for the HR-V crossover in the US. The HR-V has similar useable interior space, is built on the same platform as the Fit, but is lifted up and costs more.
The last year of the US Fit in 2020 started at $17,145 with destination. The current HR-V starts at $25,095!
> Americans buy a lot of SUVs and they are all hatchbacks!
Hatchback / Hatch as a vehicle class doesn't mean "has a hatch on the back", as unintuitive as that may be. It's specifically a compact 5dr /car/. SUVs are not cars, they are trucks, crossovers are an abomination made by a Mini-Van and an SUV having a baby.
Compact 5DR cars are nearly non-existent in the US market.
I'm in the US and I'm sick of the focus on SUVs and crossover vehicles. Shopping for a Mazda3 recently and the company seems to be bending over backwards to persuade me to get an SUV instead.
VW, BMW and Mercedes tend to avoid selling their lower end/“value” models in USA+Canada.
Sometimes they’ll sell lower-end/value models in Canada but not USA (e.g. VW city editions were sold in Canada, but not USA. BMW sold some smaller engine sizes into Canada, but not USA, but still not as small as available in Europe)
There are Americans who like small cars but dealers don’t want to sell them.
The Honda Fit is the ideal getaway car in Tompkins County (see ‘em everywhere) but after mine got totaled twice in six months I went looking for a new one and the dealer didn’t have any, had the excuse that the factory washed out in a flood, but there were 50 CR-Vs made in the same factory lined up.
Before the pandemic, when sales incentives were widespread, I’d see $8000 discounts on huge vehicles, none on small vehicles. Is that really a sign people want to buy large vehicles or that dealers want to sell them? How many people walk out with a larger vehicle than they need because dealers didn’t have the vehicle they wanted?
I have a Honda Fit, and in my (urban) area it's a super-common car. It's great! It's cheap, apparently pretty reliable, fits well into streets, and has a surprisingly large amount of cargo space when needed.
Since they cite slow sales, it's probably a good lesson in how one's own situation can't be generalized too well. Based on what I see in my own area I'd have assumed they were selling like hotcakes, but presumably the suburban market is sufficiently larger and obsessed with vast SUVs to make that irrelevant.
Probably more like the SUVs had higher margins so they could market fake discounts/incentives.
Largely, an SUV and a sedan have the same expensive/complicated electronic/mechanical parts, but with stretched bodies so they can nearly double the price but definitely not double cost.
I think most people associate cost with volume (other things being ~equal). The notion of paying the same or more for something that is smaller is inherently a hard sell. In other places, there are significant advantages (either in taxes, fuel costs or convenience parking/going places) that counteract that to a lesser or greater degree, but those are largely missing in the US.
Not just tiny cars, but somehow base US engines on the same car will be bigger than euro versions.
I never understood that since Euro driving generally has higher highway speed limits, predictable or non-existent speeding enforcement, more stop-and-go (when city driving) and more hills (ok, that can be subjective but very true for me).
Just like gun calibers, many Americans, myself included, still have a bit of bias from the hot rod culture of the 50s. Most are used to go to work and the mall but they like to "what if". We like things that go boom
Per-capita number counts everyone, not just drivers, I imagine. More people drive in the US so it's natural per-capita travel will be more. The "wash" part makes no sense to me. Somebody shopping for a car when gas is 8 dollars will consider fuel economy more than when gas is 3 dollars regardless of per-capita travel distance. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of car shoppers cannot even estimate this distance for their country.
https://jalopnik.com/a-simple-explanation-why-america-doesnt...
https://www.hotcars.com/these-are-the-best-hot-hatches-ameri...
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/cxmwk4/why_are_all_th...