It depends, how effective was your yelling? If he's still there then, yes, and your grumpy old man card has been revoked.

Compared to most cars driven here, yes they are small cars.

You don't have to be a farmer to find a justification for owning a pickup.

Construction workers, mechanics, hunters (better to use a beat up truck than a nice car to drive out in field to pick up a deer), maybe you shop a lot of auctions and yard sales and have furniture to bring home or take somewhere else to resell for profit. Many Americans find the utilitarian nature of a pickup as useful.

Primarily it's image though. I think it's the rough and tumble can do anything image/if I can do it myself why hire someone else to do it mentality, that originates in our pioneer/cowboy/rancher/farmer roots that is still ingrained in the majority of our psyche's, that drives the purchase of trucks.

Additionally, I would imagine most European's live in an urban setting, whereas we still have a large % of our population living in suburban and rural settings. Makes owning a larger vehicle easier to justify if you have somewhere you can park it, let alone cost an arm and a leg to do so.