Very similar experience. Bought a v8 GMC for RVing and while turbo v6s can handle similar payloads, the turbos themselves break very often. The v8 sound and feel is a nice extra benefit.

This is true; but OTOH, no self-respecting pimp would ever be caught dead outside a club waiting for his girls in a Fit.

I have a pilots license and most of the engines are from the 70's, and they're huge and heavy and high displacement and hardly make any power. Engines have come a long way since then.

Damn they're both ugly cars!

Quiz: when did the t-bird turn into a t-turd?

Ans. 1958 and yet again in 1969:

https://zicmoto.com/history-of-the-ford-thunderbird/?gad_sou...

In contrast, here's a true sports car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_T-type#/media/File:MG_TA_si...

> At a certain price for gasoline and diesel, sustained, I'm sure they will change their mind.

I'm not. My first car was a used late-70s Ford V6, which got 15mpg on a good day. The car was made 5 years after the first Middle East oil shock, and clearly Detroit was still making boats for millions of people who wanted them.

You mean the Chrysler-Fiat "Global Large Engine" Turbo I-6.

The short answer is, Stellantis mgmt. takes the US market for granted, and is indifferent to what it wants, and is actively contemptuous of its US dealer and customer base.

This has been a continuous problem for mass-market European brands in the US.

Because they are the logical dutch

The GR86/BRZ added those in 2022+ but didn’t offer a way to control loudness, using a small board attached to both the canbus and the audio system. It is, in online enthusiast communities, disliked for providing ‘fake’ horsepower and for being ‘too’ loud. So: they can, but if the manufacturer gets it wrong, then it’s much worse.

This solution also misses that for many folks in the U.S., imposing the emissions of a V-8 engine upon their environment is not just about how it sounds in-cabin, it’s about marking territory, and V-8 engines are quite good at that. You would need a subwoofer to broadcast it properly and you would likely run into amplified sound laws in many regions that are not applicable to engine noise.

Some cars do that (and let you choose between V8 vs spaceship sounds). Even though it's optional a lot of people mocked the feature

They can and do. Since at least the 10s automakers have been using tricks like pumping the engine sound into the main cabin or using speakers playing an audio file. The speakers usually toggle when the car is in "sports mode" or not. Car enthusiasts typically don't like it because they know they're being lied to. Average drivers don't even notice it because we all grew up with "car goes fast, cat gets loud." Automakers started doing this to make inline 4s sound growlier and also because most of the time you want your car to be as silent as possible. Obviously as EVs appeared around the same time, they did the same thing with EVs (eg the BMW i8 is a notable example).