I don't think I agree with that. There are other reasons to live in a more rural area like being more secluded, closer to nature or, more commonly, cost of living.
A rural area also does not imply car dependence. I myself have recently moved to a fairly rural area (1.5k inhabitants) and can still get just about everything done by bike.
This only works because the neighbouring village a few km away has a supermarket and a train station with service to the next largest city and a metropolis. It's not very good train service mind you (single non-electric rail with hourly schedule) but even that is enough for me to not need a car. Imagine how much would be possible if it was actually decent train service.
I can understand why you might want a car in such a situation but it's certainly not required.
That sounds more like a kernel issue than a distro issue. Were you on regular linux or linux_latest?