> That doesn't explain their popularity throughout the worldDude, sorry, you're going completely off on a tangent here. I'm not saying cars should be abolished; I'm saying cars are, on average, bigger than they should be, because of rich-world cultural constructs. In the third world, for example, cars are much smaller on average, exactly because function is preferred over form. That's perfectly fine. The roads of Asian cities are full of small one-person vehicles that simply cannot be replaced, that's fine. What is not fine is first-world metropolis being clogged with suburban 4-seaters with huge empty boots and powerful underused engines just because of cultural constructs.
Honestly, you're arguing a strawman -- I've never said cars are bad, I said big wasteful cars are bad. I never said you should take the bus, I said that the vehicle you take to the city should be space-efficient.
> with the exception of dense city centers.
Which is what we were talking about.
> You're delusional if you think Top Gear viewers are the reason cities are clogged with cars.
I picked Top Gear but I could have picked a lot of other examples. What I meant is that there is a certain entrenched culture that despises small cars for no good reason. Consider the typical Clarkson line "would you pick up <some supermodel> in this car?" -- that's pushing a cultural view where you need a big-ass car to be successful and get laid. Why couldn't you pick up a supermodel in a cool and space-efficient city-car, why does it have to be a wide-ass affair? Because that's what "real men" do. That becomes a subliminal message that will work when you go and buy a car: you'll likely get the biggest one you can afford, because that's what real men do (not that women are oblivious -- they react to it as well, buying oversized SUVs "for protection" or huge sedans "for ambition").
I honestly don't care what goes on in the countryside; we are talking about efficiency in metropolitan settings here, where outdated cultural norms are clearly keeping us back.