top 5 petrol and diesel cars in the US and Canada?
 

as a non US dude, i'm struggling to get a handle on what petrol and diesel vehicles you have over there..

Could some kind folks give me examples of the petrol and diesel cars you have?ideally i'd like to find out the most popular cars, say over the last 10 years

I'd like to see some pics, and get some idea of the tech specs and mpg etc..

Hope this helps Best Selling Cars in the U.S.

And of course you can see what america prefers most. a 5000+lb pickup.

That and of course your typical family sedan now consists of a 250-300hp V6 and does 0-60 in 6 seconds.

Take all the cars you have over there. Feed them McDonald's with car steroids for 10 years and you have ours.

The most fuel efficient cars would be the Honda Insights (especially the older 2 seater version) and the Geo Metro's (1L 5-speed 2-door hatchback), and the newer Prius's.

For Canada look at the the Natural Resourses Canada website vehices.gc.ca

Junk, junk, and a few decent ones thrown in for good measure. While our GMs and Fords have gotten better, the Dodges still stink, with the possible exception of the Dodge caravan.

Best I can figure from watching a bit of Top Gear, the estate car (station wagon) is not very popular over here, but it is quite popular in Europe. There is an abundance of fuel hating small hatches and cars with diesels, while over here, only the hot hatches come stateside, and the diesel option is nearly nonexistant. In the passenger car category, the number of diesel options is (off the top of my head) less than 10 models. The lorries (semis) and many of the heavy duty pickups can get away with having diesel engines if their weight rating is high enough to exempt them from EPA testing for the most part. Passenger cars and light trucks with weight ratings less than 5000 lbs (?) have to follow stricter guidelines than the big stuff. We also have tons more MPVs (minivans), and it would seem take the place of the estate car over here.

We have an abundance of pickup trucks, and minus the diesel options, the Toyota Hilux is one vehicle that seems very similar to our Toyota pickups here. The Ford Transit has just recently started coming over here, and the Mercedes Benz sprinter has been here since 2001 and has seemed to be very popular for its efficient engines.

We have almost no Renaults, Peugeot, just a handful of VW, Mercedes is considered a luxury brand accross the line, there are almost no Alfa-Romeos, Masserati is rare, as is anything from British Leyland. Nissan and Mazda are quite popular over here, much more so than what I can tell in the UK, and Toyota is quite popular as well. However, the Nissan Skyline is considered an exotic, and is rarely seen outside of the uber-rich groups. Same goes with Ferrari, Lambo, Aston Martin, and to an extent BMW, which is considered a luxury brand. If you wanted to buy a cheap 30 year old Porsche you'd almost be out of luck stateside.

I found a breakdown of us auto sales by brand, and gist of it is

GM 19.8%
Ford 17%
Toyota 14.3%
Honda 10.8%
Chrysler 9.4%
Nissan 6.6%
Hyundai 5.2%
Kia 3.2%
Subaru 2.2%
VW 2.1%
Mercedes 1.9%
Mazda 1.9%
All those less than 1%
Audi, Volvo, Mitsubuishi, Suzuki, Porsche, Isuzu, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini, Ferrari, Maserati, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Maybach.

51.2% of light vehicles were cars, 48.8% of light vehicle were trucks (which I assume includes SUVs)

Keep in mind this is simply vehicle sales for last year, but I suspect it is close to accurate for the car population as a whole. Isuzu was the only real suprise, as they used to sell a lot of trucks once upon a time. And how Nissan is behind Chrysler is beyond me, unless it is because they last so long their faithful buyers don't need a replacement as often.

Thanks for the Info Gents...

I'm shocked at the showing of VW/Audi/Volvo..

Certainly seems like the manufacturers are providing large engined, low power units for you...

Anything over 2.5L here is a large engined car- it seems to be a "Compact" to you. weird.

I understand your emissions regs are focused on "Visible" polulution, rather than the carbon/emmissions based assessments here?

I believe our emissions regulations are NOX (smog) and HC (unburnt hydrocarbons)

Edit: and particulates for diesels.

California emissions usually dictate emissions further down the road for us, and the California EPA hates diesels.

11 years of abuse and still going ;)

From what I've picked up; emission testes are all based on PPM, not total pollution. So a small engine can fail even though its putting out less than half the NOx of a V8.