I'm not sure when you were in the US last but gas is about $2.00 per gallon here in California now. and Detroit hasn't made many cars over about 2 tons in quite a while. In fact, the majority of US cars are actually Japanese in design and are assembled here in the US.
see geo metro, ford aspire, or yugo.
the 5 liter engine you are most likely talking about is in Ford cars like the Mustang or a different version in the pickup trucks it makes, which are both made in Canada now. The Mustang is a performance car, where the european designers went for more cylinders and higher RPM to make more horsepower in high RPM ranges. The US designers tended toward 8 cylinders and big displacements to make horsepower in low RPM ranges.
Status in the US in the 1950's 1960's and 1970's meant you had a car as big as a whale that could seat about 20 and it got 3 gallons per mile. Because back then you actually *could* get gas for pennies a gallon. So it's still the case here in the US to see people who are well off buy big cars because that's what dad did, when he could afford it he bought a Cadillac land yacht and then he was riding in style. Although any more you see a lot of mazda miatas, Porsche Boxsters, and BMW Z3s running around
Personally I'd take a 3000 pound Mustang with a Cobra 4.6 liter in it over any of those any day.
Update:
SUV's are trucks, they are built on truck frames and use truck engines, and therefore are not counted as cars. As you see lots of big trucks
anywhere I doubt the original poster was talking about
trucks. Obviously trucks have
plenty of reasons to be big and have lots of power. Carrying stuff for one, status aside. Also I forgot to mention that England has its own group of
big cars the
Rolls Royce for example. For the record I live in the bay area and yes you do see lots of SUVs.... the
miserable bastards. I have a
sneaking suspicion that my death will be because of a
road raged dumb fuck driving an
SUV that rolled his
status symbol over my
transportation. And as SUV's are only dangerous to those
not driving SUV's He will probably survive.