Thanks to changing tastes, these stylish cars, trucks and vans won’t be for sale in the U.S. any time soon.
1.Alfa Romeo Giulietta
The sharp-looking Alfa-Romeo Guilietta is the right size for Europe’s narrow roads. Vehicle occupants also tend to be, well, narrower in Europe than in the U.S.
2.Holden Ute SS
The Ute SS from GM’s Holden division. Look familiar? Squint and you’ll see a Chevrolet El Camino, the old car-with-a-truck-bed last sold in the 1980s.
There was some thought given to selling the Ute in the U.S. as a Pontiac, but that idea died along with the Pontiac division.
3.Ford Ranger
The Ford Ranger compact pick-up just recently went out of production here in the United States. New, more fuel-efficient versions of the full-sized Ford F-150 have made the old Ranger unnecessary, Ford spokespeople say.
But the Ranger name lives on overseas on a fun-looking truck bigger than the Ranger we knew here but not quite as big as the F-150. It’s ideally suited to foreign markets, says Ford, where roads — and whatever passes for roads — are narrower than here.
4.Chevrolet TrailBlazer
You can still see plenty of TrailBlazer’s driving around on American roads, but these old-school truck-based SUVs haven’t been sold here since the 2009 model year. Americans have moved on to car-based crossover SUVs like the Chevy Traverse.
5.Toyota Alphard
Toyota sells a very good minivan here in the United States called the Sienna. Back home in Japan, Toyota sells this very funky looking number with the unfortunate — to American ears — name of Alphard.
While it looks cooler than the Sienna, it’s also slightly smaller, which would make it less competitive among America’s very un-mini minivans.
Peter Valdes-Dapena
