No, has nothing to do with population density but all to do with legislation, taxation, and advertisement. It started as a regulatory loophole and slowly became a viral advertisement meme.

US, Canada, Australia are the only odd ones out. Even in Mexico most pickup are utilitarian low height flatbeds, same for most Central and South America.

You guys have a large (length and height) vehicle arms race that is absolutely setting back decades of vehicle design, pedestrian safety, and fuel efficiency.

Pickup trucks are huge in large part because of fuel efficiency regulations like CAFE which regulate fuel use per unit area. Ironically deregulating fuel efficiency would make small efficient pickups sellable again. Also repealing chicken tax would help allow economical imports. The domestic demand for remaining compact ranger/s-10/Tacoma is massive. But it's basically illegal economically to sell more.

I'd have definitely driven a compact in from Mexico were it not also illegal to permanently import them before 25 years old under most circumstances .

As far as I understand it, some of the most popular pickups in North America are basically unregulated already. Ford certainly isn't advertising the mileage on an F250, and as an HD truck I'm pretty sure the feds give it a pass altogether. I know there is discussion about it for future HD trucks, but as far as I can tell that's still a few years off.

I could be totally wrong, though, this is not an area I'm an expert in. But I do own an F250 that routinely gets sub-10 mpg unloaded. Fortunately I only drive it a couple thousand miles a year to tow my trailer, otherwise I'd feel a bit guilty about how brutally inefficient it is. HD trucks also suck as daily drivers IMO, the suspension is so stiff that it would ride better with a couple thousand pounds of ballast in the back. One of my neighbors does exactly that. Probably doesn't impact the gas mileage, can't go a lot lower...

That’s the whole point. They enacted a stupid MPG formula into law. So instead of manufacturers trying to make a compact pickup get 50mpg, they just sell big old f250s because the formula lowers down the MPG requirement dramatically.

Malicious industry capture is more likely explanation than stupidity IMO. Sell bigger more expensive shit while shutting down economical competition.

And Middle Easterns and Australians.

Basically everywhere but us Europeans and our tiny cars in our tiny cute medieval city roads (:

And your 13 ft (4m) wide rural roads.

You talking about Britain? They have some of the narrowest main roads I've seen in Europe.

Mexico has large cars, but Mexico doesn't seem to "love" them in quite the same way as the US. I am typing this from Monterrey, NL, MX right now, and the car-size distribution skews smaller here, while also having a very long tail of small cars, cars significantly smaller than anything even available in the US. Some cars that are quite popular in mexico that are totally unavailable in the US include:

- Chevy Aveo (not available in the USA as far as I can tell) https://www.chevrolet.com.mx/autos/aveo-auto-sedan

- Hyundai i10 https://www.hyundai.com.mx/modelos/grand-i10-hb/

- Suzuki Ignis https://www.suzuki.com.mx/autos/ignis

- Nissan March https://www.nissan.com.mx/vehiculos/todos/march.html

For folks who just need to get around, all of these are small new cars available for purchase for less than $18,000 USD.

For the higher end buyer, there's more expensive small cars available as well:

- Audi A1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A1

- Seat Ibiza (still midsize, but smaller than e.g. Kia Soul) https://www.seat.mx/autos/ibiza/descubre.html

- etc.

So while the small car is dying in the USA, it's doing great in Mexico.

For the average person, low population density means more miles driven. That’s a good reason to go for a vehicle that gets more miles per gallon. To the point that land and parking is cheaper, you might expect vehicles that sprawl with longer bodies and an aero shape to provide a good mix of capacity and fuel efficiency. The Tonka Truck design you see a lot of in the US isn’t especially practical for most buyers. A strong hint that most trucks aren’t purchased for hauling is that they don’t have an 8-foot bed equipped. It seems like the truck’s purpose is more to be a signifier of group affiliation.

If it were purely population density you’d see massive cars in the Nordic countries, and small cars in Los Angeles