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

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). Perhaps I was at the wrong coast?