Not all cars have such high beltlines that make you feel like you are driving a sherman tank. American cars seem to have these issues more than imports. Maybe its a way to shirk around some crash testing metrics by deferring to less visibility than to offer more visibility and potentially spend more engineering something just as strong?
My theory with the XC60 refresh with its huge, high, flat-top, snub-nosed bonnet compared to the old sloping one is that all that extra volume is for the fancy double/hybrid engines and so on.
Or maybe people just like to feel like their car is a rhino, but the same refresh also slightly lowered the roofline and the driving position feels lower too.
The other down side is that my wife always shouts that I'm going to crash when parking nose-in because the bonnet feels twice as long as it really is.