Yeah there are a fuckton of "real men" in Europe, influenced by the firehose of toxic culture coming from the US. I agree 100%, governments need to prevent selfish idiots from endangering others with their bad choices.

Pavement princesses.

Man I sure do love when people with money can pay to inconvenience everyone else

Examples?

Knowing what lurks underneath old cities the demand for archeologist would absolutely skyrocket.
Great job creation prospects.
And then we get to queue in cars to get coffee. So convenient.
It's just wins all around

Good luck dealing with the shitheads who buy these. They'll whine and cry about not having space, x, y, z... I am surprised none of the EU brands have a popular small truck. Closest thing appeared to be Ford Rangers.

Yep a real full size truck you could probably take that car and put it in it its bed. With room to spare.

Depends on the end goal. Those 18" tires on most trucks aren't cheap, especially if you have to swap one out every few months

Sorry, what? A lentil like the bean? How does that ruin a tire?

I mean, selfishness is one thing, but these things literally won't fit in most parking spaces and even a number of garage spaces.

You can technically buy a bus, too, but most people don't think it's practical.

The race to size already happened in Europe once, when 4x4s started getting marketed to scared housewives under the pretense that they were safer, if that sounds familiar. I know a few people who were tempted.

Then they looked into it and got over it pretty quickly.

I'm sure you'd see some (I saw my first local Tesla the other day, the guy had blacked out the badge to avoid having it vandalized). I'm not sure we're going to see a race towards Europeans as a group buying humongous, impractical, extremely expensive cartoon trucks.

Wait. Are you telling me that the American "if you can parallel park, here's your driver license" license allows you to legally drive trucks and other heavy machinery?

I cannot describe how utterly simple and bountiful it is to search for citations and find them, so for the benefit of avoiding arguing against your complete and utter ignorance, I'll just assume you and the gang upvoting you are just being the most blatantly facetious people here.

(...) if Russia can't even win against Ukraine how would they ever fight against the EU, our army is both larger and much better equipped then Ukraine.

The problem is, the EU isn't united nearly enough to fight a war together. If, for instance, Russia attacks, it'll be mostly Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia defending. Maybe Romania too, and maybe with some support from the rest of the EU. As it stands right now, the EU is divided on many issues, with some countries (notably Hungary) intentionally sabotaging it from the inside.

Even if - and that's a big if - all or at least most of EU member states can come to agreement and cooperate in a conflict, our militaries aren't very well prepared to work together. This would require years of cross-border military drills between all of the member states. Especially considering the fact that the vast majority of all EU soldiers have never seen any real combat. Russia may be losing a lot of soldiers in Ukraine. But those who survive become extremely valuable assets for the military, since real world combat experience is infinitely more useful than textbooks or casual training exercises.

if Russia can't even win against Ukraine how would they ever fight against the EU, our army is both larger and much better equipped then Ukraine

Yes, if Russia invades EU then all gloves are off. But in the more immediate and near term this is about military production, which Russia is in full production capacity while the West as a whole is kind of just tip toeing. The former is already outproducing the latter in artillery munitions by a wide margin. The EU produces even less than the US in military. Even though the EU became the biggest aid sponsor of Ukraine, much of that aid is non-lethal forms like finances, food and logistics. The US still provide the biggest military help to Ukraine.

Even if there is a war between EU and Russia, fact of the matter is that Russia already has the initial military production advantage over the EU, because the EU downsized and underestimated Russia's plan of aggression for years.

I think what the EU-US trade deal was about is outsourcing the military production to US, while the EU ramps up their own. After all, the key message from that deal is that the EU will invest in US military production.