Look at this Peugeot that is currently on sale in Europe. Even though it will probably get a true 50 MPG U.S. gallon average, there is no Peugeot dealers in the U.S. Sitemap - AutoblogGreen diesel-sipping-peugeot-3008-hybrid4/ We don't have many choices for cars in the U.S. as they do in Europe. alfon
per our friends at Wiki... "As experienced by other European volume car makers, Peugeot's U.S. and Canadian sales faltered and finally became uneconomical, as the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_505"]Peugeot 505[/ame] design aged. For a time, distribution in the Canadian market was handled by Chrysler. Several ideas to turn around sales in the United States, such as including the Peugeot 205 in its lineup, were considered but not pursued. In the early nineties, the newly introduced [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_405"]Peugeot 405[/ame] proved uncompetitive with domestic and import models in the same market segment, and sold less than 1,000 units. Total sales fell to 4,261 units in 1990 and 2,240 through July, 1991. This caused the company to cease U.S. and Canada operations after 33 years. There are currently no known plans to return to the U.S. market." In other words, sadly they lost their nice person, nobody wanted one, and sales across the pond were just not profitable! Now, when you would want a hi MPG auto, they are gone! Some smart american auto company should make arrangements to import this car, oh wait, then it would be better than anything they currently produce, h'mmmm, we can't have that now can we?
That car looks nice. I drove a Peugeot 807 last year in Spain/France. What a wonderful minivan. No, it wasn't a hybrid, but it was a 2.0L 4 cylinder turbo diesel in a seven passenger van that had a lot of power and got about 35 mpg. I'd trade in our Honda Odyssey in a blink of an eye for that van. Too bad their sales were so bad years ago. We need that kind of innovation here.
Why? Prius gets better mileage on the euro test cycle (so it will real world here too) Diesel is cheaper there and more expensive here so the Prius is less to fuel up when you do No expensive diesel emmision control systems that need to be replaced often as maintenance items (just ask a TDI owner) Prius is Toyota quality, Peugeot is most definitely not lol. Fun little cars, but they aren't held to very high standards.
Was driving the boss of a European car company a few months back and we got onto the subject of why cars in America are much cheaper than Europe - even when taking into account sales taxes etc. Turns out that they don't make profit in America unless they sell millions of units. Someone like Peugeot or Renault isn't going to do that so why bother? You can make more money everywhere else in the world (Europe, South American, Africa, India, Asia & Chine) without all the additional American compliance rules and regulations. Emission regulations are not much different elsewhere with the odd exception. Crash testing is not much different either - just different boxes to tick. So do American protectionist policies limit choice in America? Well put it another way - I give Fiat/Chrysler 3 years before they get hit by some American Government instigated nonsense in the same way Toyota got it early last year. Soon as GM are back in the top spot it all gets dropped. :lalala:
