Large cars and my new goldfish theory

I was sitting in the backyard with Winston a couple of days ago and admiring my goldfish.  Our house came with a pond - which seemed lovely until the never ending headache of swampdom.  This summer a landscaper informed me that my problems were the result of having no life-forms - so I bought two goldfish.  Now I have two pets that have made my pond a beautiful hassle free water feature.

Back to my story, I was sitting outside, admiring my goldfish and discussing a couple who had come to the dealership that day.  They were a lovely couple from England looking for a small Mercedes.  Ideally a C180 - yeah I know you've never heard of it right?  Apparently one of the more popular cars in England.  The woman told me she was surprised how little people worried about gas consumption here and how hard it was to find a good small car.

Winston and I were discussing just how many fantastic car models are available in Europe that never make it to North America - the car manufacturers claim it's for lack of demand - I wonder if it might have to do with not marketing them right.

An excellent example would be the Toyota Echo - marketed in Canada for 5 short years - never released in the USA.  In 2006 redesigned into a bigger Yaris and now marketed across North America.  The Yaris is a great small car.  However, in my opinion the Echo is superior.  It's a peppier drive and has a smaller body with a ton of room.  Now that they're no longer made they're also hugely popular.

I digress.  Our conversation touched on the "need" people to seem to have for a mini-van the moment they're pregnant with their first child compared to this European couple looking for a small car for their family of four.

Suddenly it hit me!  We're like goldfish!  Just like my goldfish who will grow as big as the pond will allow them, we as people seem to do the same.  In North America we have room to grow; we have room for big houses, which require a lot of stuff to fill them.  We do everything bigger.  Much was made of the book "French Women Don't Get Fat" and a big part of that was small regular shopping and small regular gastronomic delights as opposed to large Costco shops and huge portions of salty processed food.  It would seem that like my goldfish, our large land-mass has allowed us to expand to the point wherein large has become a "need" as opposed to a luxury.

As I sit in my house in the burbs that is bigger than required for a couple and struggle with eating small gastronomic delights and am a self-confessed shopper, it is not my intent to cast judgement - but I was struck by how far reaching the differences are between our two continents.

Perhaps picturing myself as my little goldfish who would eat until it blew up given enough food should be food for thought.

Happy Driving!