Model Range Why Europe Doesn't Buy American Cars

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US car manufacturers build anti-world cars. No wonder they have little success outside their own borders.

US President Trump finds it unfair that countless German luxury cars are driving around the USA. While the Europeans arrogantly spurn American cars. However, the problem is home-made and will hardly be solved by customs policy.

It is not entirely correct that Europeans do not buy cars from the USA. According to data from the consulting company Inovev, around 205,000 cars from factories between New York and Los Angeles were imported into the EU, EFTA, and the United Kingdom last year. The number has been more or less constant for years, fluctuating only by a few thousand units. The potential problem from Trump's perspective: the vehicles are rarely from American brands. In 2024, 188,000 units bore logos from BMW and Mercedes. Additionally, there were 5,000 Volvos.

The USA Builds for Itself

The rest is accounted for by American-brand cars built in America. They actually play no role in Europe. What does make it across the pond are niche cars like the Jeep Wrangler SUV, the Ford Mustang sports car, or the Tesla Model X electric crossover. All of them are more lifestyle and luxury models, nothing that would generate high sales figures. This is also because the USA no longer manufactures cars with sales potential, at least from the perspective of European customers.

The US auto industry has detached itself from the rest of the world in terms of model policy and primarily builds cars for domestic tastes: large pick-ups and trucks. This development originated in the 1960s when the protectionist "Chicken Tax" initially shielded the US commercial vehicle market and made European or Japanese pickup trucks or off-road vehicles almost unsellable. Over the following decades, these former work tools increasingly established themselves as competition for passenger cars and gradually pushed the classic sedan out of product portfolios and road traffic.

Unsellable in Europe

The best-selling US cars in the USA are almost unsellable here outside of fan circles. The Ford F-150, a large pick-up, finds almost 200,000 customers annually in the States; in Europe, independent importers manage to get a handful on the road. It's a similar situation with the Chevrolet Silverado, Ram Pickup, or the GMC Sierra and the numerous off-road derivatives of these pickups. In the USA, they are top sellers, but in Europe, they are exotic. "For the local roads and cities, the cars are too big, too cumbersome, and too thirsty," says Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the Center Automotive Research in Bochum (Germany). Additionally, there is a difference in quality perception in both markets—Europeans are significantly more demanding, especially regarding manufacturing quality and interior design. Thus, US manufacturers are happy to leave the European business to independent importers and have otherwise settled well into their North American habitat.

Pickup sales are a good business; the technology is rather simple, and the profits are high. Within the Ford Corporation, the F-150 is by far the car with the highest margin—despite the relatively modest prices in the USA. In this light, it is understandable that US industry representatives have withdrawn from other segments. The Japanese and Koreans were able to take over the shrinking sedan market, while the Germans bask undisturbed in the premium sector.

When US cars still played a role

At the beginning of the millennium, the situation was different. At that time, US car manufacturers still exported around 2.2 million vehicles worldwide, many of them to Europe. German customers could buy models like the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Cadillac CTS, or Dodge Caliber. Additionally, there were numerous vehicles from US brands built in Germany or South Korea: from the Chrysler Crossfire to the Chevrolet Aveo. Today, the most prominent US car is the Tesla Model Y, which is built in Brandenburg for the local market. Even Ford can no longer keep up—since the German branch of the US corporation had to cut its volume sedans Fiesta, Focus, and Mondeo due to lack of sales volume, the blue oval is increasingly disappearing into the lifestyle niche locally. According to Dudenhöffer, Ford is in a double dilemma: US cars are unsellable in Europe, and the European ones in the USA. The latter had to be sacrificed first.

It is unlikely that the situation for US cars will change again. Pickups and trucks will probably never become megasellers here. Moreover, there is no indication that US manufacturers will change their product strategy. Even if they did, they would face strong competition in Europe from the new Chinese brands. Although they may not always hit local tastes either, they are overall much closer and often technically ahead.

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