Why is it that some international cars are good cars in its home country, but are not well made in North America? Does it have to do with costs and/or emissions? For example, VWs are good in Europe, but are not good in America.
In Europe small engines and diesel are popular and engines over a 1.6L or V6 engines are unheard off.
The best selling cars in Europe are cars like the Renault Clio, Peugeot 208, Volkswagen Polo.
Renualt is apart and the controlling party of “Renault ALLIANCE” - owners of Nissan and Mitsubishi. Technologies like the CVT X-Tronic work well on a cheap light 115 horsepower tiny Clio, don’t seem to work that well at all on a Nissan SUV.
Furthermore, VW is known in Europe for their cheap, efficient, small engines in nice zippy cars with the dual-dry clutch DSG. In the US they put in big engines, wet-clutch transmissions and a bunch of other tech that isn’t their bread and butter.
In the case of Stellantis, their Peugeot 208 is almost the best selling car and there’s no doubt why. It’s a tiny zippy fun hatchback with a 1.2L engine and an EAT8 AISIN tranny - nothing even close to the HEMI V6 and ZF transmissions they try to develop for their US devision.
TLDR; European car makers just don’t care enough about reaching perfection in the US market. That market is relatively small for them, requires a lot of R&D, and most of them prefer investing in the Chinese and home markets.
Quality control.
