Do you want to report "What is the most common car (year, car maker, and model) found in Jamaica?"
Fair enough.. and I did grow up with a f150 here too..but I swear that ford pickups are the exception…
<and because of the pickup being one of the better cars but not being the car that Jamaicans want…it doesn’t get bought often>
Because they probably sell more cars in California alone than all of the RHD central American and Caribbean nations combined. That’s a lot of paperwork and politics to deal with to sell what is to them, a tiny amount of cars.
Because their cars are already RHD, their home market is relatively small, and the size of the cars sold in their market are more relevant in Jamaica. The best selling vehicle in the USA is the massive F-150 full sized pickup. Many manufacturers don’t even produce sedans any longer.
Ok. That makes sense.
For the us to retool a factory to sell sedans that are rhd to Jamaica might not be worth it when the numbers are crunched
Where else do they drive on the left in the Caribbean?
Grand cayman?
My friend there are much much larger markets closer to them than Jamaica. Only a hand full of countries have the steering wheel on the right side and I think Jamaica is the only one on this hemisphere.
All of the English-speaking Caribbean + Suriname + a decent chuck of large African countries including South Africa + most of Oceania including Australia and New Zealand + India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, etc.
Not to mention the UK and Ireland.
Hardly a handful nor a tiny market.
And American companies do make cars for these markets - Ford in particular (but not made in the US, so importing from the US doesn’t make sense).
There are right hand drive jeeps, also not made in the US (prob in Australia or South Africa).
Japanese cars are typically way cheaper (parts and maintenance too).
American cars are bigger with larger engine displacements, not a good fit for our roads and economy.
There’s no American equivalent to the Toyota Probox or Nissan AD (the workhouse vehicles of Jamaica) nor to the Toyota Prado (the go anywhere SUV).
The (right hand drive) Ford Ranger pickups are the only model making an impact here and these are not the same as the US domestic model (in fact I think they were originally designed for the global market and not for the US).
Keep your cars please.
