[SWAGGER]

Espeefan is bang on the money. Yes, at first glance, the face of the euro trucks look like a huge flat wall, but the EU does have extremely tight emission regulations and all vehicles both private and commercials have to pass full tests, every 2 years for private and every single year for commercial (In Ireland anyway). It's basically a road worthiness test and if you fail, you don't get your cert and window disc and to fix the issue and retest. The trucks, just like cars are tested in wind tunnels and I would think that they are probably a bit more efficient than the US trucks, between design, size, weight and engine size. I assume the engine capacity is a little smaller here, but I don't know for sure. Plus we tend to pull smaller loads in EU. Standard trailers are only 40 foot long as opposed to the 53' vans I see over there a lot.

I have seen so many videos of US trucks, where the guy plants the throttle and you see massive black plumes of smoke billowing out of the huge stacks. You would never see anything like that here, people would think you were about to explode! LOL! You don't really see those giant CAT motors in trucks here either, usually just the OEM factory units, which are plenty powerful for the particular job in hand.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love American trucks, much prefer them to our own, but they are definitely not fuel efficient. Not that I care about that, while most people here are switching to diesel or hybrids and dropping from 1.8 or 2 litre cars to 1.6 or 1.4, even less for some, I just bought myself an American 4x4 - Jeep Grand Cherokee. Nothing special to you guys I am sure, but in Ireland, to drive a 4.7 litre V8 petrol is insane, between the road tax (based on engine cc and costing me 1566 euro per year) and then petrol and everything else, most people think I am idiot, but I am sucker for that V8 rumble.