You're absolutley right about that, Neptune which is part of the problem. The other part is that cars in the US & Canada shrunk during the late-1970's, making driver seek vehicles that could do the jobs that cars were no longer able to do, and SUV's were among the light-duty trucks that served as replacements. G-MANN is also right about the European vs. American view of what's considered big, since we've had bigger cars and trucks in the post-war era than they've had.