Still I doubt if it is actually justified, considering in India a similar size car is perfectly serving its purpose with a 60 to 70 HP engine.
The same reason Apple Doesn't sell an iPhone Zero in the US with a single core processor and 64MB of RAM.
The US is a mature product.
High end brands don't sell sub-lowend products.
But then it means that Americans are overpaying by buying capacity they don't really need. This is something I'm always wondered at, as in the 3rd world even well-off people try to minimize their expenses.
But we do need it. Look at traffic on our highways. You need power to safely merge in many places.
Of course, it helps that most low-powered cars sold in the EU will have manual trans, where all US MBs are autos...
Also, US buyers will run the AC a lot more, and AC eats a lot of power...potentially as much as 15-20HP... that's a lot more noticeable with a tiny engine.