History GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff / Automobiles

* New Zealand loves imported Japanese Domestic Market cars. While most JDM cars favored by New Zealanders are performance vehicles like the Nissan Laurel and Toyota Altezza or kei cars like the Suzuki Carry, importing "normal" used JDM cars is also common. At one point, 59% of vehicles registered on New Zealand roads originated from overseas markets, as opposed to 41% of which were delivered "NZ-New". It helps that New Zealand and Japan are both left-hand traffic/right-hand drive countries.

* Chryslers, likewise, have [[http://theoldblackchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/Chrysler%20300%20Black%20American a substantial fandom]] among African Americans, especially the full-size 300 sedan, which was notably designed by a black engineer. Chrysler heavily runs ads on Creator/{{BET}} and in black magazines like ''Ebony'' and ''Jet'', often focusing on the car's Detroit heritage (the Motor City having long also been famous as a major center of black culture); given that black people buy the 300 at five times the normal rate, it makes sense that they'd market in that direction. According to [[http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/15/idUS149974+15-Jan-2008+BW20080115 one analyst]], this is due to the aspirational nature of many middle-class African Americans, with the 300 being seen as a powerful, classy, luxurious, yet still attainable status symbol.

* Thanks to the American auto industry's [[NeverLiveItDown inability to live down]] its [[TheSeventies '70s]] AudienceAlienatingEra, Japanese cars, especially compact cars, have this status in America, to the point where many of the major Japanese automakers have built factories in the US to accommodate demand (and get around tariffs). While the Detroit Big Four (later the Big Three after American Motors went bankrupt[[note]]And technically now the Big Two as Chrysler was purchased by Fiat in 2014 and merged with the PSA group (Peugeot/Citroën/Opel/etc...) to form Stellantis in 2021 (and prior to that was merged with Mercedes). However Chrysler's American operations have kept running throughout all the mergers and employ 90,000 people in North America, so while the company might not be American owned the cars are still largely being designed and produced in the U.S. and Canada[[/note]]) were struggling to make small cars after a lifetime of making only huge, luxurious land boats, Honda and Toyota were coming from a good five-ten years of making the Civic and Corolla, and when their actually reliable cars hit the market against a cesspool of poor-quality American subcompacts, their success was instant. For decades, Japanese cars have been seen by Americans as the benchmark of quality -- it's only been in the last few years that the (perceived) gap in quality between Detroit and Japanese automakers has closed. With trucks, on the other hand, American brands like the Chevy Silverado and Ford F-150 have a much stronger reputation than their Japanese counterparts.

** Buick's popularity in UsefulNotes/{{China}} has been argued to be one of the reasons that brand was spared following General Motors' filing for bankruptcy and subsequently being bailed out by the United States government (stateside, Buick had been reduced to three models in recent years and was marketed mainly as a lower-priced alternative to GM's top-line Cadillac brand). Good news for Buick, bad news for the brand that was ultimately discontinued in the aftermath of the GM bailout: Pontiac[[note]]traditionally marketed as GM's performance division, akin to Chrysler/Fiat Chrysler/Stellantis brand Dodge[[/note]].

** Koenigsegg, an exotic hypercar manufacturer based in Sweden, takes this scene up to eleven by [[{{Irony}} putting the muscle car engines into their hypercars]] [[note]]Though not technically muscle cars, or not at all, the Koenigsegg engines are somewhat based off Ford Modular V8 engines[[/note]]. Every production Koenigsegg is a Swedish hypercar with an American muscle-styled V8 engine, which has very high tuning potential that helped the maker cranked them out. [[FragileSpeedster Hypercar technology]] + [[MightyGlacier Muscle Car Engine]] = [[LightningBruiser Win]].

** The late '90s brought us video games like ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed'' and ''VideoGame/GranTurismo'' and the start of the ''Franchise/TheFastAndTheFurious Fast and the Furious]]'' series, giving American teens their first exposure to "JDM" cars[[note]]'''J'''apanese '''D'''omestic '''M'''arket, cars made in Japan but [[Main/NoExportForYou not sold in North America]][[/note]]. Starting in the mid-2010s, when those teens became adults with careers and a lot of those cars became legal to import due to American tariff laws making exceptions for "vintage" cars that are more than 25 years old, a huge collector market developed for those JDM cars and the sporty Japanese cars that did make it stateside, like the Toyota Supra[[note]]Not to be confused with the fifth-generation Supra currently on sale, which is actually just a re-skinned BMW Z4[[/note]], Nissan [=300ZX=], Mazda RX-7, and Mitsubishi [=3000GT=]. It also caused a pretty dramatic shift in American car culture, as the popularity of muscle cars declined a bit (though they actually made quite a comeback later on, and never fell out of favor with the older generation) in favor of heavily modifying cheap foreign cars.

** The late 90s brought us video games like VideoGame/NeedForSpeed and VideoGame/GranTurismo and the start of the Franchise/TheFastAndTheFurious series, giving American teens their first exposure to "JDM" cars[[note]]'''J'''apanese '''D'''omestic '''M'''arket, cars made in Japan but [[Main/NoExportForYou not sold in North America]][[/note]]. Starting in the mid-2010s, when those teens became adults with careers and a lot of those cars became legal to import, a huge collector market developed for those JDM cars and the sporty Japanese cars that did make it stateside; like the Toyota Supra[[note]]Not to be confused with the fifth-generation Supra currently on sale, which is actually just a re-skinned BMW Z4[[/note]], Nissan [=300ZX=], Mazda RX-7, and Mitsubishi [=3000GT=]. It also caused a pretty dramatic shift in American car culture, as the popularity of muscle cars declined a bit (though they actually made quite a comeback later on, and never fell out of favor with the older generation) in favor of heavily modifying cheap foreign cars.