>It’s really funny to watch N. Americans buy BMWs with substantially larger engines than Germans, even though N.A. speed limits will top out at ~100 or ~110km/h.
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.
The actual driving style (distracted but polite to a fault and painstakingly low-key) I experienced in a week of driving as a European tourist tells yet another story:
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).
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.