Delurking to say that I used to live in Japan. Way back, when Bush senior was also trying to push the Japanese to buy more American cars. This was talked about in the Japanese press back then.
The Americans didn't understand then, and still don't understand, the factors stopping people from buying them:
Size:
- Japanese suburban roads are very narrow. Additionally, to cope with seasonal rainfall, the roads have gutters on both sides that usually take the form of ditches around a foot deep. Manoeuver your car wrong and you'll end up in a ditch and probably with a broken axle. Obviously, smaller and shorter cars are more desirable.
- Everything car-related is set up, unsurprisingly, to work with Japanese size cars.
If you are rich enough to have land to park a car on, gate width, size of garage roof (usually just a plastic roof to cover the top of the car) etc. all come in a set size.
Same goes for parking garages, etc.
Maybe American cars would actually fit, but would-be buyers would probably have doubts.
Spare parts and maintenance:
-The market is set up such that these cater for Japanese cars. Repair work and spare parts for American cars need specialised garages, and entail higher costs and probably longer waiting times as parts need to be ordered in. The whole tariff craziness/trade wilfullness right now probably makes this seem even more of an issue right now.
Image:
-The belief that quality and fuel consumption of American cars is far inferior.
- The current niche status of American car owners in Japan. Basically, there are two groups: enthusiasts, and the Yakuza (i.e. organised crime).
So enthusiasts have a similar status to something as obscure as train-spotters (though no shade on them). You can't just tell the general population to go out and start train-spotting. They'll understandably refuse. Same with buying an American car.
- The Yakuza - and there are truly quite a lot of them at least in certain cities - tend to flaunt their status: different hair styles, different clothing and shoe styles, and ...drive around in an American car. So definitely not the image that your average citizen is going for.
Finally, public transportation and the demand for cars in general:
- Sure, there are plenty of rural areas where people want or need to have a car, but a vast number of people live in urban areas where having a car is more of a burden than a benefit.
Roads are narrow, and parking spaces are such an issue that you are not allowed to buy a car unless you can show you have somewhere to park it. (There are more issues, but this post is getting too long).
- Importantly, it is often MUCH faster and easier to use public transport in a city than to drive. Long story short: Japanese rail lines often bought and built rail lines along the most direct routes between places long before car owning was a thing. You can travel from the centre of Osaka to the centre of Kobe in about a third of the time it would take by car, and the trains leave every few minutes. Trains are affordable, reliable and amazingly frequent. Bus travel is not quite as good, but still not too bad.
So, simply, the demand is not there.