Tax reasons are the most common source of fringe benefits. As you mentioned, in Israel, a company car is a commonplace benefit among hitech workers, while in the US it is almost unheard of - because of the differences in how this benefit (and cars in general) are taxed. Though with recent change in Israel's tax code this became less popular, but some decade ago a company-provided car was an assumed part of the standard benefits package.
However, we have been talking about housing being provided by employer because there's no other means to get housing, so this is completely different case - here company cars are the function of government-introduced tax law, not of prices of the cars.
