Hard for me to comment on the car part. Honestly I don't know that I have an opinion on it.
I've lived in two major cities for my entire life and have never needed a car. I still own one, always have. It was a discretionary purchase though, and I think that would be the typical American response to your point: Americans would prefer the option to spend the excess salary how they prefer as opposed to diverting it to public transpo that they might not use. In my case, I'm in an area that could actually benefit from public transpo, but in other cases, it's simply not an option for the majority of travel. Which, by the way, applies to rural areas in Europe as well.