US manufacturers can't attract young buyers from Toyota and Honda because of their 1990s obsession with building SUV, American car industry experts have told Detroit's Big Three brands.
"Too many young adults were driven to school in the back of an Accord or Camry," says one commentator. "To them Ford or Chevrolet is a foreign car."
It is thought that relatively expensive SUVs and 'trucks' with high running costs deterred young metropolitan Americans.
Once young buyers have had a good first-car experience with a foreign brand, the marketing experts analysis said, it's very hard to recover the potential business.
