In Europe they are much more a la carte - cloth seats, etc., available, making them the standard cars in many ways at any price point.
In the US and other "luxury" targeted markets, the country only offers certain premium configurations or bundles, such as how nearly all BMWNA cars have the "premium package", etc., significantly raising the MSRP to hit those premium luxury categories.
Even BMW Canada has some smaller base engines available than BMW USA. (Reduced stroke volume on the n52).
It's also why a lot of people buy pickup trucks that they never haul or tow anything with, over SUVs - the latter aren't 'cool'.
BMW/truck makers could sell the smaller engine for proportionately less money, but they don’t because it would make the vehicle too available. Or just make up close enough numbers and most won’t care.
99% of bystanders won’t know the difference.
BMW doesn’t follow its numbering scheme for engines anyway (The 323 had a 2.5L engine.)
That's not why Americans like big engines. American driving styles resemble drag racing: they like to take off from stop lights, even though their ultimate speed isn't as high as on German autobahns.
Americans want big engines so that they get moderate acceleration at the semi-idle throttle levels that allow their automatic transmission to stay in the quiet low rev range. Never saw anything in terms of "taking off" that could not have been handled by an engine half the size at full throttle on manual in high gear/low rev (most economic way to drive a given ICE) or by an engine quarter the size driven at low gear, high rev (most economic way to reach a given performance level of you can size the engine to fit).
Perhaps I was at the wrong coast?
I’m with you on pickups though, gotta have a Duallie V8 just in case you install a 5th wheel one day.
It's a little better nowadays in many western US states, 75-80mph limits are common on rural interstates.
We also have lots of roads with literally nothing and no one for, in some cases, hundreds of miles so it really makes no difference whether there's a speed limit or what it is.