Germans Love David Hasselhoff / Automobiles

Favorite in the Americas

The United States

• Thanks to the American auto industry's inability to live down its '70s Audience-Alienating Era, 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 (and unlike most foreign makes Chrysler still uses union labor), so while the company might not be American owned the cars are still largely being designed and produced in the U.S. and Canada) 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.
  • At the exact same time, Americans Hate Tingle is also in play. Despite their success, Japanese cars have a very vocal group of detractors in America, composed mainly of those who feel that they are destroying the American economy, and that their reputation for quality is exaggerated. Back in the '70s and '80s, driving an "import" anywhere in or around Michigan (especially Detroit), Ohio, or Indiana may as well have been an invitation to get your headlights smashed out, to the point where the term "Japan-bashing" entered political debates. Needless to say, this crowd cheered when Toyota got hit with one of the largest automotive recalls in history. This is ironic once you learn that Toyota and Honda sedans top the list of "most-American-made cars"; Detroit's Big Three do a lot of their auto assemblage in Canada and Mexico nowadays (the latter for the cheap unskilled labor and the former for the highly-educated workforce plus national healthcare means they aren't saddled with massive legacy costs like in the US). There's a reason so many people in the "Rust Belt" opposed NAFTA.
  • The late '90s brought us video games like Need for Speed and Gran Turismo and the start of the Fast and the Furious series, giving American teens their first exposure to "JDM" cars^note Japanese Domestic Market, cars made in Japan but not sold in North America. 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, 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.
  • To wit: Elsewhere in the world, Mercedes-Benz is considered the pinnacle of car making. In the US, Lexus — Toyota's luxury marque — was thought to be better (for the price) than Mercedes.
• Subaru:
  • Within the United States, the New England region, especially the state of Vermont, is almost stereotypically associated with Subarus, due mainly to the fact that they're some of the least expensive all-wheel-drive vehicles that one can find without purchasing a big truck. Winter weather in New England can get nasty, but at the same time, the region is very urbanized and hilly with lots of winding, narrow roads in cities, towns, and countryside alike, making big trucks impractical and unpopular. (Even businesses and contractors prefer to use vans like the Ford Transit rather than pickups.) Their popularity in New England is such that, from 2000 to 2008, Subaru partnered with L.L.Bean, an outdoor outfitter based in Maine that is itself stereotypically associated with Yankee "prep" culture, to create top-of-the-line special editions of their Outback wagon and Forester crossover. Subarus are also popular throughout the rest of the Northeast, as well as the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountain states, for many of the same reasons (bad winter weather + urban environments = demand for small AWD cars). In fact, unlike other Japanese automakers whose first toeholds in the American market were on the West Coast, Subaru of America's headquarters has always been in either Pennsylvania (originally) or New Jersey (currently).
  • This article from Jalopnik, describing Volkswagen's woes in the American market in the first half of the 2010s (before the TDI emissions scandal broke, mind you), used Subaru's sales dominance over VW to drive its point home. Every single mention of Subaru consists of stereotypes about the people who buy their cars.
  "Subaru has only three major product lines: you have the Impreza line, which includes the XV Crosstrek, which is only purchased by people in Colorado after they've smoked a bowl. You have the Legacy line, which includes the Outback, which people in Oregon think is an SUV. And you have the Forester, which is a legitimate compact crossover that can be enjoyed without marijuana or Oregon residency. ... And as we look back on 2014, we'll remember this as the year that Volkswagen ceded its plan for global domination to a bunch of people from Vermont who wear flip-flops in the snow.''"
  • Subaru's vehicles are also very popular among LGBTQ+ drivers, especially lesbians, almost to the point of stereotype. As explained here, in 1994, Subaru's market research noticed that lesbian Subaru owners had a high socioeconomic status and an active lifestyle, complementing Subaru's four existing consumer bases,^note healthcare professionals, educators, IT professionals, outdoor enthusiasts and were four times as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to own a Subaru. Rather than get embarrassed, Subaru saw a largely untapped demographic and actively courted the LGBTQ+ market starting from 1995 onwards. They have run ads in gay and lesbian media with taglines like "It's Not a Choice, It's the Way We're Built", sponsored the VISA "Rainbow Card" (a loyalty credit card that helped to fund donations to gay rights causes), and hired Czech tennis star (and open lesbian) Martina Navratilova as a spokesperson. The fact that some of their strongest US markets — the aforementioned Northeast and Pacific Northwest — are also among the most socially liberal and gay-friendly in the country, to the point of giving Subarus something of a hippie-mobile reputation in the US, also feeds into the image of Subaru as a "lesbian car". Even the Impreza WRX STi, a car built for the World Rally Championship and marketed to performance enthusiasts, and the BRZ, a sports car co-developed with majority owner Toyota (who sells a re-badged version known as the 86) and marketed to mostly male sports car enthusiasts, are no exception.
• Chryslers, likewise, have a substantial fandom among African Americans, especially the full-size 300 sedan, which was notably designed by a black engineer. (As of this writing the only other car on sale with Chrysler branding is the Pacifica minivan.) Chrysler heavily runs ads on 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 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.
• Before Subaru, it was Volvo and Saab that were seen as the unofficial Foreign Cars of the East Coast. It helps that the cars were designed in and for Scandinavia, a region with a rough winter climate and mountainous terrain not unlike that of the northeastern US.^note Literally, the Appalachian Mountains are part of the same paleolithic mountain range as the Scandinavian Mountains, as are the Scottish Highlands and Newfoundland. Even after Volvo moved upmarket during the 2000s and ceded the lower rungs of the market to Subaru, they remained popular among wealthy northeasterners who didn't want to look ostentatious in a Mercedes or a BMW; somebody writing a Yankee preppy character and did their research will likely show them driving a Volvo. Saab, meanwhile, is dearly missed among that same group of people. (Short version: GM bought the brand and mismanaged it into the ground. Appropriately enough given the above, at the time Saab went out of business they and Subaru were working on a joint crossover SUV project, which ultimately came to market as the Subaru Tribeca, only feeding the image of Subaru as Saab's Spiritual Successor.)
• The AC/Shelby Cobra is a rather interesting case. Back in early 1960s, the Cobras, like its predecessors, were built and developed in Britain. However, under agreement with the American tuner Carroll Shelby, AC Cars was able to obtain engines from Ford, which wanted a car to beat Chevrolet Corvette. AC exported the chassis to USA where final assembly was made. As such, while the Cobra was pretty popular in UK, it sells like a hot cake in USA where some of them were used for privateer racing, which led to many continuations made there. AC acknowledged this and made a Spiritual Successor called MK VI, sold in various European countries.
• Japanese Kei trucks, recently, have become popular with American farmers, groundskeepers, and hunters, especially in states where they can be registered as AT Vs (even despite the 25 year rule). They are generally cheap to buy and import, many are 4x4, and even come from makes that are already trusted in the US (such as Honda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, etc.).

Canada

• Lada, the main marquee of Russian automaker AvtoVAZ, was hugely popular in Canada until AvtoVAZ pulled out of the market. Even to this day, there are still Canadian owners clubs for Lada models, and the Lada brand is viewed somewhat more positively in Canada than other countries the brand was exported to. It helps that cars like the Riva (known in Canada as the Signet) were designed for the roads of Russia, a country known for a rough winter climate not unlike that of most of Canada.
• Acura (Honda’s luxury marque) was a big seller in the US during its heyday in the '90s and early to mid 2000s, but positively adored in Canada — to the point where, in 2006, about one out of every five luxury cars sold in the country was an Acura. Even some exclusive models were sold there during that period, notably the EL and CSX, both based on the Civic.

Mexico

The Mexican market absolutely loves durable and reliable cars, bonus points if they're cheap and efficient, to the point that many cars will continue production decades after a model has been discontinued in the rest of the world.

• During the early 60's until mid 90's, the most popular car in Mexico was the Volkswagen Beetle (nicknamed there as "Vocho"), due to the fact it was cheaper than the imported American cars available at that time (the fact that the car was actually made in Mexico at that time, simplifying the acquisition of spares, helped too) and compact enough to fit anywhere. Its popularity ended with the mid-90's economic crisis, the lack of replacement components, the arrival of better alternatives (as explained later), and the halt on the production of these cars (which ocurred around 2003). In spite of that it is very common to find these cars in big cities such as Mexico City or Monterrey, specially as taxi cabs until 2012, a date set by the Mexico City government as a deadline to get off the streets all of these iconic cabs.
• Part of the downfall of the Volkswagen Beetle was due to another German car — the mid-90's Opel Corsa, sold in Mexico as the Chevrolet Chevy. Having the extreme durability and low price and maintenance it took to be the first serious competition against the Volkswagen Beetle while simultaneously being much more luxurious, the Chevy in Mexico was an instant success, quickly outselling the Volkswagen Beetle and leading the sales charts for so long that when the original Opel Corsa was facelifted in 2000, its release in Mexico was delayed for 4 years while Chevrolet designed an actual Chevrolet Chevy that was sold exclusively in Mexico and Colombia. Only until then was the new generation Corsa introduced in Mexico, this time with the original Corsa nameplate and billed as a more luxurious alternative to the Chevy, up until 2012, when both models were replaced by the Chevrolet Spark and Sonic.
• Nissan also scored this in Mexico with two models: the Hardbody Truck, released in 1986, pulled in the rest of the world around 1997 but pulled in Mexico up until 2008; and the Sunny B13 (Tsuru), sold in Japan from 1990 to 1994 but sold in Mexico from 1993 to 2016. The latter has to thank its ridiculously durable engine that can last 700,000 km — a round trip between the Earth and the Moon — without even opening the engine block for major repairs; eventually, by 2016 it became apparent that many lives could have been saved if the Sunny B13 had nowadays ubiquous safety devices such as traction control, ABS brakes, power steering and airbags, and as a result the Sunny B13 was finally dropped and basically replaced with the Nissan Versa.
  • The Versa itself could go down the Sunny B13's path of very long market life now that Nissan announced they would continue its production along with the next generation of the Versa itself.
• Suzuki still rings up decent sales in Mexico well after the closure of its US branch thanks to its offering of small cars disliked in the United States but well received in Mexico.
• The Toyota Corolla in Mexico is still young, introduced sometime around 2005, but it's starting to carve a name for itself on account of its legendary ruggedness and reliability despite its unassuming looks. Ask any American what they think about the Toyota Corolla, and they'll describe it as bland, dull, boring, an appliance, and the car equivalent of watching paint dry. Ask a Mexican, and they will praise the Corolla's reliability, and will probably start telling you about that old Corolla that still runs good as new.
• However, as much as the Mexican market favors extremely durable cars, people there also have a soft spot for hulking SUV/pick-up juggernauts. This has its origin in Mexico's agriculture and mining operations usually taking place in a notoriously mountainous landscape, which means the people who manage these activities must use all-terrain vehicles capable of hauling small, valuable cargos such as power generators, bulk insecticide or mining machinery. This local preference for large trucks eventually evolved into a preference for luxury trucks, such as the Lincoln Mark LT, which was basically a luxury Ford F-150 sold exclusively in Mexico (the first-gen version was sold in the US, but it remained obscure and the second-gen wound up Mexican-exclusive). However, some models of that kind were widely sold for different reasons — the Ford Excursion, which in the US was an incredibly titanic monstrosity of a SUV aimed at insecure people and discontinued almost as fast as it was introduced (replaced by the Expedition EL/Max), was still sold in Mexico because it turned out to be an excellent narco attack vehicle with room for 10 goons armed to the teeth, and the same goes for the Ford F-150, which was until recently a favorite of Mexican police departments thanks to its fleet model being reliable, affordable and capable of carrying a fully armed police squad.
• The only weird exception to the rule is the Cutlass Ciera. A car that was well known around Mexico as being a particular nasty gas guzzler, for reasons no one can explain, it was so popular it wasn't all that rare seeing the car in Mexican roads well into the 2000s, 5 years after it had been discontinued.

South America

• Similarly to the above, in Brazil, VW Beetles (nicknamed "Fusca") are still massively popular. Their production was discontinued in 1986, but after many popular praise and the president's vote, it went back to the factory lines in 1993 for another 3 years. But even today it still has a massive fanbase, partly due to being very affordable, having easy-to-find/cheap spare parts and being generally "cute and classy" looking. There are many fan clubs around the country where proud owners exhibit their (custom or classic) Fuscas.

Other Places

Big in Asia

• While we're on American automobiles, let us not forget this: China. Loves. Buick.
  • The Buick Century and Regal, models loathed by Americans, are selling extremely well in China, surpassing all Japanese marques.^note Though anti-Japanese sentiment also plays a role in that. While the Regal was discontinued in North America during most of the 2000s, it continued to be manufactured in China and remained a bestselling model for years. The 5th-gen Regal that was reintroduced to North America in the 2011 model year was first introduced in China two years prior. No wonder GM ditched Pontiac in favour of Buick during restructuring, this despite the fact that its continued presence robs Cadillac of volume in the "near-luxury" bracket and constrains Chevrolet from competing directly with the Ford Titanium-trim models.
  • The third generation GM minivans got such a poor reception at home that, after just four model years, the company dropped out of the minivan market completely to concentrate on crossovers. However, the GL8, a China-exclusive van based on the same platform, is Buick's biggest seller.
  • Like the case with the Regal, Buick Envision is more a car GM developed entirely for the Chinese market before being imported into the US. The aforementioned Regal, at the very least, is a rebadged Opel.
  • Buick's popularity in 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), though by the time it was given the ax Pontiac's lineup was reduced to nothing but rebadged Chevys.
• The Mitsubishi Lancer nameplate still crops up in the Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese market due to popularity among family users, despite being discontinued elsewhere (the Evolution trim being an Acclaimed Flop Franchise Killer for the Lancer nameplate).
• The VW Phaeton was not exactly a success and when the Diesel scandal necessitated some restructuring and cost cuts within the VW company the new model that should have entered production some time around 2016 was quietly shelved. It turned out that most people who wanted a VW wanted a reliable solid car and no "luxuries" and those that wanted a luxurious car would rather chose Audi, Porsche, or a non VW-owned brand. The Phaeton did however enjoy quite some success in China. Apparently the subdued luxury VW was aiming for hit a nerve there.
• The Hummer was generally seen as Awesome, but Impractical at best in the United States. The country that loved it, however? Mongolia. Hummers gained popularity among Mongolia's upper class due to their big, strong aesthetics and ability to handle the country's rough roads. If you visit Ulaanbaatar, expect to see multiple Hummers every day. (This may explain why a Chinese company attempted and failed to buy Hummer during GM's restructuring.) However, GM has since rebooted the Hummer name for an electric-powered GMC pickup and SUV, with the first sales in late 2021.
• Japan has a special craving for the non-AMG (or pre-AMG, before Mercedes-Benz took over AMG) high-performance Mercedes-Benz models where foreigners consider it a normal Benz. 190E Evolution and 500E deserve this.
• While American cars have mostly failed to reach major sales, Jeep has been a major success in Japan due to catering towards the Japanese Domestic Market with Right Hand Drive models, folding mirrors, and marketing itself as the inventor of the SUV.
  • Additionally Chevrolet and Dodge vans are popular with van culture, especially the latter where they are referred to as Dajiban (lit. Dodge Van) and have annual races across various circuits. Dajiban came about when motorcycle racers needed a van that could carry their bikes to the track for race day, and thanks to the numerous Dodges left behind by US Service men who imported them they were quickly snatched up for that purpose. Eventually drivers started racing the vans altogether.
• While Japan is an automotive superpower, Toyota, Honda and Mitsubishi do most of their business outside the country. Most Japanese people in urban areas don't bother owning cars, due to the expense of gas and parking along with the country's highly-developed rail network making driving impractical for all but the rich, taxi drivers or people in rural areas. Most of the cars sold there are small kei cars (like Subaru R1 and R2 mentioned above) that can negotiate Japan's narrow streets more easily than full-sized cars. Outside Japan, while kei cars aren't common elsewhere, they had a good small presence in Singapore, as mentioned above. One can see a Suzuki Every, Mitsubishi i, or (if you're lucky) a Daihatsu Copen driving on the Singaporean motorways, though the roads in Singapore are not as narrow as they are in Japan, for the most part.
  • However, kei cars have become passe in Singapore for now, as with most other countries outside Japan.
• Subarus, especially Imprezas, are ubiquitous in Singapore, too. There are also a few R1 and R2 kei cars. Heck, Subaru has even somewhat sponsored, and given cars to, the Singapore Police Force. You can easily find an Impreza police car in this urban island. It's just there are no WRX STi police cars yet.
• The Suzuki Carry was a Japanese invention, yet it is near-ubiquitous in South Korea (where it was known as the Daewoo Damas) and Uzbekistan (where it is known as the Chevrolet Damas). The Damas forms the backbone of Uzbekistani marshrutka public transport, and continues to be built in Uzbekistan long after most countries outside of Japan stopped selling the Carry model.
• The Volkswagen Country Buggy was a utility vehicle built by Volkswagen in Australia to be a utility offroader for Australia's roads. Australians didn't liked the car; however, when it was assembled in the Philippines instead as the Volkswagen Sakbayan, Filipinos loved it due to easy maintenance; it helped that it is relatively easy to build the Country Buggy in a developing country like the Philippines.
• According to this news report, Toyota Corolla is very appreciated in Afghanistan.

Big in Europe

• In The '70s, Europeans had a craving on AMC Pacer despite their negative stereotypes on American cars. A silly French advertisement comparing AMC Pacer to an attractive woman's buttocks◊ attracted French buyers successfully somewhat, and remained a Cult Classic there, although not as much as its European rivals. British people, on the other hand, hated it for mechanical reasons.
• The Pontiac Trans Sport and its sister models, the Chevy Lumina APV and Oldsmobile Silhouette, were widely hated in America due to their avant-garde styling which caused them to gain the unflattering nickname of "Dustbusters"; by 1996 GM replaced the Dustbusters with more conventional minivans (the Lumina APV was replaced by the Venture; the Trans Sport was renamed the Montana after a popular appearance package; the Silhouette name was the only one left from the original lineup). In Europe, however, said styling was much better appreciated due to its similarity to that of the well-regarded Renault Espace, which made the Lumina APV and Trans Sport especially popular in France.
• The Nissan Figaro, a Japanese-exclusive car from The '90s styled after a convertible from The '50s, is quite popular in the UK due to its quirky looks, even spawning a few specialist shops and an owners club. It was also Sarah Jane's car in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
• Despite never being officially sold in the United Kingdom, the Lincoln Zephyr/MKZ, a luxury version of the Ford Fusion/Mondeo sedan, is quite popular there. Not many are found on British roads, aside from some American and Canadian expats, but it is well-liked with a small cult following.
• Volkswagen Group brands from VW and Škoda to Audi and Bentley are popular enough in Romania to outsell any other foreign brand by an order of magnitude. It's a matter of clever marketing, by providing a sizable network of dealers, cheap maintenance, affordable parts, frugal diesel engines, and plentiful opportunities for tuning and modding. (Romania does have a car manufacturer — Dacia — but most of its sales are abroad and its cars are sold in the Americas under the Renault badge.)
• In Finland, the Mitsubishi Galant has a cult status there, despite being unpopular in much of the rest of the world. However, it was dropped in 2003, and you can't get the new one there — but people still grey import them. It gained some notoriety in 1995 after a murder suspect escaped around Helsinki in one, causing a temporary drop in popularity, but it returned a few years later after the incident.
• Thanks to a large immigrant population in America, U.S. automakers opened manufacturing plants in Scandinavia to build American market cars instead of European market cars. Now, there are more American cars in Sweden than anywhere else outside North America. They are a mainstay of the still-vibrant Swedish greaser ("raggare") subculture, where a lovingly-maintained '50s "Yankee car" is a must. Today, the largest American car show in the world is Sweden's Power Big Meet.
  • Koenigsegg, an exotic hypercar manufacturer based in Sweden, takes this scene up to eleven by 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. Nearly 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. The upcoming Gemera, scheduled to go on sale in 2024, is still a hypercar, but is a plug-in hybrid, whose internal combustion engine^note Since 2007, all Koenigsegg ICEs are flex-fuel, capable of running on pure ethanol, pure gasoline, or any mixture of the two. is a choice of either a 2-liter, three-cylinder, 600-horsepower engine or its muscle-car V8. Hypercar technology + Muscle Car Engine = Win.
• Russia has a special attitude towards foreign cars ever since the Soviet Union. However, two examples are especially notable. The BMW E38 (in black only!) gained a cult status among wannabe gangsters in the early 2000s after a popular action film (called Bimmer, fittingly enough) featured it as the Cool Car. Earlier in The '90s, the Mercedes-Benz W140 was a symbol of wealth for the common people and an inseparable attribute of a "new Russian", the folklore archetype of a vaguely Mafiya-esque, Nouveau Riche Upper-Class Twit.
  • The Russian Far East loves imported Japanese Domestic Market cars, even despite those cars being right-hand drive in a right-hand traffic country. This is thanks to the fact that, due to simple geography, buying JDM cars — especially second-hand ones — is much cheaper for its residents than buying domestic or European ones.
• Albanians are known in Europe to love Mercedeses, and rightfully so given the Albanian terrain and poorer roads it had. Even during the rule of car-averse Communist Albania, Mercedeses are favored by officials and even dictator Enver Hoxha himself had a Mercedes-600 for longer trips.

Special cases/Big around the World

• For a while, Toyota no longer sells the Hilux/Tacoma pickup in Japan; it has a small cult following among customizers and enthusiasts, but the commercial fleet buyers who actually buy trucks new prefer cheaper, nimbler 0.6-liter keitorakku (micro trucks) — the Tacoma's engine being literally ten times bigger. Pretty much, Japanese Domestic Market hates pickup trucks. Japanese road conditions — short distances and tight curves — favor shorter wheelbase cab over engine designs, and Japanese people prefer to use station wagons, minivans or SUVs as lifestyle vehicles due to their aversion against open cargo beds, particularly in unpredictable weather - another reason Toyota had to discontinue Hilux in 2004 after most other pickup trucks were discontinued in Japan.
  • This preference against big-name pickup trucks was made painfully apparent to Japanese Transformers fans during the production of the franchise's Binaltech line; Takara refused to front the money to allow their American counterpart Hasbro make a Dodge Ram figure for the line unless they made it into a truly iconic and favorable character, fearing it wouldn't sell otherwise. Hasbro eventually gave in, and Binaltech Convoy (Optimus Prime) was created.
  • The Tacoma is quite popular among truck owners in Washington State, as there is a city named Tacoma. The city itself? Not so popular.
  • The Hilux remains an iconic and popular vehicle in South Africa amongst suburban families, rugged farmer types and weekend adventurers. A new TV ad campaign featuring a talking boxer dog with a disturbing mouth full of human teeth has driven the Hilux into modern cult status too.
  • Hilux are ubiquitous in Thailand where new Hiluxes are made. This is due to extremely-high taxes on passenger cars there, and due to lack of such taxes on pickup trucks in Thailand and their neighboring countries, they have become a popular vehicle category for family vehicles.
  • Hilux has a bit of a Memetic reputation from the Top Gear (UK) episode where they demonstrated that the car is pretty much indestructable. This has actually been incorporated into Toyota's advertising.
    • During the Christmas Special of The Grand Tour, Jeremy Clarkson is actually worried about completing the trip when he sees the remains of a dead Hilux on the side of the road. Dropping a building on it? Works perfectly fine. Driving it in Namibia? Torn to pieces by the terrain.
  • The ability of Toyota's pickups to be reliable, rugged and perfectly happy with machine guns bolted onto the back led to a war being named after them.
  • Though in 2017, the Hilux saw a resurgence since Toyota revived it in Japan after 13 years, much to the surprise and fanfare of enthusiasts in the second wave of SUV popularity - while not as huge-selling as in other countries, the Hilux has been favored by serious car buffs in Japan for its unique proposition.
• The FJ Cruiser, another vehicle made by Toyota, while made in Japan and developed for the North American market, is much more popular overseas than in the USA and Canada, where it had a cult following but wasn't popular enough for Toyota to continue selling it there, resulting in it being discontinued in the US and Canada after the 2014 model year. It still had a reputable fanbase among SUV buyers in its native Japan, but even there it was discontinued in 2018 (being indirectly replaced by the aforementioned Hilux). However, it remains on sale in the Middle East and South Africa.
• The Nissan Skyline GT-R (before the R35 GT-R in 2007) was never intended for sale outside Japan. Yet in the '90s it had such a following in the UK that the R32, R33, and R34 models had official limited export sales to the UK. Top Gear (UK)'s Jeremy Clarkson himself praised these cars as well (the R34 was listed as #8 in his Top 100 cars video).
  • Quite a few GT-Rs made it to the United States despite it being nearly impossible to make one street legal. It was that popular for racing.
  • Skylines are incredibly popular in Australia, mainly due to their success in the Australian Touring Car Championship in the 1980s and early 90s. The R31 in particular, while not well known elsewhere since it never received a GT-R, was produced locally and received a 3 litre engine known for being easily turbocharged. They are now cheap and popular as entry level drift and drag racing cars.
  • Such popularity led Nissan to resume manufacturing spare parts for the old-school Skyline GT-R, including major components such as engines and body panels.
• In the United States the Ford brand doesn't have nearly the fame (or infamy) as bigger American players like GMC or Chrysler. They are strong in Texas (where they have been the leaders for a long time, at least on the truck side) and do hold onto a niche market of making iconic pickup trucks that range from exceedingly practical workhorses, to luxury models that people only buy for the pickup look, to astoundingly Awesome, but Impractical titanic sized monsters. They have for more brand recognition through the highly successful Model T, Model A and Mustang and their mentions in the history textbooks than they do for their modern lineup. Outside of the US, however, it is still an extremely popular brand for its practicality. The fact that Ford is the oldest successful car company and invented so many industry standards really generates interest in its cars overseas. After all, it has been mass producing cars for over a century, a practice it invented. Its advertising outside the US plays more like an ad for some fancy European liquor than a car commercial, and use the same logic that since it has had much more time to practice and refine their craft it must be better.
  • The fact that Ford, unlike most other American car manufacturers, manufactures special versions of its lineup to conform with foreign auto standards and expectations helps things tremendously. For example, since Europeans tend to hate sedans, their cars sold as sedans in the U.S. have a different more streamlined rear in Europe. This reduces the length of the car by around 30 to 50 cm and greatly increases the vertical space and overall volume of the trunk. The shortening effect may not sound like a lot to Americans but to Europeans the ease to storing cars in smaller spaces is a huge factor in what models they pick and the reduced length makes them superior in this regard to hatchbacks.
• Mazda may be a small player on a global scale, but it punches above its weight in Australia, consistently placing as the second-best selling car brand, with only Toyota beating it out.^note Mazda is the second-best selling brand in Australia, but not the second-best selling company. That would be Hyundai, whose sales numbers include not only its own nameplate but also those of its Kia and Genesis brands. The Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, with Nissan and Mitsubishi selling vehicles in Australia, also outsells Mazda there.
• 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. As with Australia above, performance cars like the Skyline GT-R remain popular.
• When it comes to body styles, minivans (or MPVs, as where you called) may have that "soccer mom" stigma in North America, but they have gained popular status in Asia and Europe where people use them as family vehicles; they have passenger and cargo capacity of an SUV or a pickup truck without the gas-guzzling property, due to gas prices being expensive and fickle in these regions. If you have a larger family and just need a vehicle for everyday purposes, a minivan can fix it. And unlike pickup trucks, minivans have closed cargo rooms, which are useful in Asia and Europe where the climates are unpredictable.
  • Though minivans saw a resurgence in North America with the demand for SUV-sized vehicles that have reasonable fuel economy and their standard maximum engine power was increased thanks to fitting highly-tuned V6s into the smaller engine bays.
• The Volkswagen Golf has been successful around the world, but the original Mk1 model was so popular in South Africa that after the Mk2 was introduced, Volkswagen South Africa debuted the Volkswagen Citi Golf, which was a facelifted version of the Mk1 sold exclusively in the country. The Citi Golf outlasted the original Mk1, being manufactured and sold all the way until August 2009 when it was discontinued.

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