What made you think so? Maybe because advertising campaigns exploited the fact there's no speed limit as such yet. But what they don't say is that it is hopelessly crowded, full of trucks and exhaust odor and often an endless stop-and-go story and congestion due to eternal roadworks and just too many vehicles on them. No comparison to the endless highways you have. Also a myth?
I have had quite a few fast cars as I used to buy and fix and sell them. They were muscle cars back in the day, but at a high speed they weren't really stable and the suspension and tires weren't the safest either. Great 1/4 mile cars though! But a few years ago I had my Acura TL just over 135 mph, I was on US 160 headed to phoenix from Moab utah, going through the Hopi reservation, it was smooth and handled beautifully. Like in the old song, the lines on the road just looked liked dots! I have a 1969 camaro RS, that I have owned for close to forty years. I have redone the suspension, brakes, etc, etc. But still at 80 MPH it feels like you are doing 100, you are really hanging on with the 1969 era sloppy steering, sure not like a modern car.
My 1968 Firebird 400 had speedometer markings up to 160 MPH, but I never had her over 100. That 330HP 400 cu.in. V8 had a lot of torque though! When my Dad first drove it, he was unfamiliar with the 4-speed floor shift, so he mistakenly took off in 3rd, thinking it was 1st, and remarked at what powerful acceleration it had! Hal
330HP 400 cu.in. V8. - impressive performance data. I've never driven a car as powerful as that one. My current car has got 147 HP by comparison. Yet such a muscle car as the Firebird was a child of its time, wasn't it? Burt Reynolds, David Hasselhoff, and James Garner as Detective Rockford had one of the later models in their movies. You'd have had trouble finding a place to park over here. Did it look like this one leaving color aside? MerlinS.69 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0); size reduced