>>1928143Car companies have their hands tied by the fact that in plenty of places people need off road vehicles that can go seriously off road. And that naturally means they need to build their drive trains and suspension systems to handle punishment, making them bigger and heavier components, if they want to avoid having to rebuild every car under warranty or suffer customer complaints for poor build quality, or worse still get sued by someone who snaps an axle and rolls off a cliff.
Bigger and heavier components means more power under the hood means a bigger car overall.
Plus, the people who actually want to off road often value larger carrying capacity.
There's a whole segment of crossover SUV's that are approximately standard car size if that's your thing, just don't expect them to take you up a mountain without modification.