Small Cars Coming Back in the US?

Sections: MINI Competitors Apr 23rd, 2008 20 Comments

A recent AP Wire story announced that Ford is ramping up production on the Focus for the US by 30%.

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Ford Motor Co. says it will increase production of its Focus small car by 30 percent this year to meet higher demand.

Focus sales are up 23 percent through March compared with the first quarter of last year. The redesigned car is taking 7.6 percent of the U.S. small car market.

Not terribly shocking considering the increase in the price of a barrel of oil, particularly over the past few months.

From a similiar story at the New York Times.

As drivers in the United States grudgingly adapt to higher gasoline prices, automakers seem to be taking a greater interest in building smaller cars that are more than afterthoughts to larger, more profitable models. A look at the vehicles on display at the New York auto show last month suggests that the design of scaled-down models – often called B-class cars by the industry and city cars by marketers – is improving.

And might I add it’s about time!

Many new models are likely to arrive in the market slot between the conventional compacts and the very smallest cars, like the Smart Fortwo or Toyota’s new rival to the Smart, the iQ, which will not come to the United States. Volkswagen’s Up family of cars, a set of concepts shown in Japan and Europe but not at the New York show, offers a vision of a global small car that can be dressed up or down, as a fashion designer might say, for markets around the world. A stripped version could sell in emerging economies and a more elaborately equipped one might be offered in Europe or the United States.

As usual, some of the more interesting cars won’t be coming to the US. One can only wonder how much longer that will last.

Follow the link for a great article. If you have the time, I highly recommend reading it.

[ Small Cars Seek Appeal Beyond the Cute Factor ] NYTimes.com

Written By: DB

C4

The current US Ford Focus is a disgrace. It runs on a 9 year old platform, they made it uglier than ever before and effectively eliminated the 3 and 5 door hatchbacks and the station wagon model. Then Ford wonders why are they doing so badly here?

Ford Europe is a different story. Their Focus and Festiva models are world class vehicles. Never understood the huge disconnect between Dearborn and their European headquarters.
Ocho9

I don’t get Ford. I have been living in China for the past 3 years. Ford had a new Focus come out here and I had heard it was going to be the same model to come out in the US. Then they brought out the conservative crappy looking current Focus. The hatchback over here looks way better than any Focus they have ever had in the US. Not sure why the US just gets crappy conservative old style cars.
Jimskater

Ford & GM are both suffering from an acute case of NIHS

“Not Invented Here Syndrome”

Symptoms include: over production of irrelevant, badly made, poorly styled vehicles, designed for a market that dried up 2 years ago…

At least GM seems to be recovering from it–witness the Opel-sourced Saturn Aura/Chevy Malibu & the (thank god for the Aussies) Pontiacs coming over from Holden.
dave

euro fords are so good! the euro focus is so good and the new focus rs is coming out soon and it’ll be awesome. and the mondeo is more attractive than passats. i don’t understand why dearborn can’t make cars just as good as them
Shamus

I think there’s a huge disconnect where American car companies make stellar cars overseas, but don’t think American’s, in general, will accept them because they weren’t designed or made here. Aren’t Toyotas, Hondas, and even Hyundais flying off the shelves?

The sad truth is that the market is driven solely be economics, not enthusiasts. The new European Focus is not made in the states, which means either re-tooling the US production line or shipping the cars over. It’s easier and cheaper to just keep peddling the old crappy product if we’re still buying them.

On a positive note, the 2010-11 MK3 Focus will be a truly global product (same for all markets with some option variances).
http://www,jwardell.com/mini/ Josh Wardell

Ford are such morons with the US Focus. They never updated the US version along with the Euro platform years ago now, it is still just new plastic over the 1999 Focus. Which was great for its time but now aged…just idiotic when they already have an excellent new version in europe.

GM, at least, is starting to get the picture by crossbreeding Saturn and Opel.

Save money wile having a better product that is already developed. How hard is that to understand? Of course these are same guys that axed the best focus model, the SVT, not long after it was introduced.

The Focus’s hint at decent handling for an american car was what led me to upgrade further to a MINI in the first place.
C4

The Focus SVT was a very competitive car against the R53. They even shared the same exact 6-speed Getrag gearbox.

Ford decided to kill the SVT performance division and the Focus SVT after the 2005 model year.

I still think Ford is a misguided and cluless operation. They need to get rid of Mercury but at least they have been unloading money losing operations from their former “Premier Auto Group” (PAG) with the sale of Aston Martin, Land Rover and Jaguar. (They still own or have interests in Volvo and Mazda).

Jim Mullaly is the current US Ford CEO. Great guy, but his background is commercial aviation. he was the former president of Boeing.
C4

GM gets it these days more than any other of the Detroit based brands.

Every freaking Cadillac car is a desirable piece of machinery as good or better than the best metal German can put in the market. Unthinkable of what was considered to be just 6+ years ago a totally dying division.

Saturn also turned around 360 degrees from the days of making eye sore tupperware cars to stylish and well built machines.

The best thing that GM in the US has done is to tap into their overseas resources from Opel/Vauxhall and Holden in the land down under.

The main problem GM continues to have is lousy resale values. But their products are the best they have in over 30 years.
gokartride

I always thought the Ford Ka was interesting. Folks abroad seemed to like the Sport version.
http://www.matthew-obrien.com Matt

Speaking of the Ka, does anyone know why Ford never brought it to the States? It seems as though that car could have had what it takes to have a little cult following… I always thought it was unique looking, and I thought the little roadster was pretty different, too. Europe always gets the well-designed small cars, and we’re stuck with the big fat ugly trucks.

I was on a photo shoot once in Arizona about 5 years ago or so, and saw a silver Ka in a driveway in Sedona. I made my entire crew pull over so I could take a few photos of it. I was like, “OMG a Ford Ka… how did that get over here?”… everyone in the crew thought it was a really cool-looking small car.
ST

Glad you American’s like our humble Holdens from Down Under… Just a pitty they get an ugly Pontiac nose-job when they head over the Pacific to your shores.

We are pretty lucky with what is on offer here in Oz… Local product from both GM and Ford as well as the pick of US and Euro models.
Glenn

I saw the VW Up concept at the DC Auto show. I thought it looked very cool, but it was all roped off so you couldn’t get a really close look at the inside.
Vanwall

The Focus is a classic example of Detroit spending lip service on small cars, and spending skidillions pushing gas-hog behemoth SUVs that with gas prices skyrocketing, are now way beyond any justification for existing, if they ever even had any as non-commercial vehicles. The hybrid mid-to-big-to-huge SUV’s are a publicity exercise to convince you to spend for the highest-profit items on the menu, rather than rationally on small cars. These porky designs will be darwined out pretty soon, I hope, and God help ya when you have to get rid of ‘em.

Seen some Ka’s visiting from over the Mexican border, and I don’t see a hair of a notion of graceful or clever design – the “il gobbo” look of a block of melted cheese with random intersecting lines just don’t do a thing for me, sorry.

Whenever GM needs a good small car design, they pull in an Opel or a Zook and slap a label on it – a no-brainer when you follow their line of design thinking that led to Vegas and such tripe. GM has officially lost the world lead, and sad to say, I think Detroit Iron is all on its way to subsidiary status for some outfit that has a clue about reality. If that sounds harsh, I just paid over $50.00 to fill up my MINI tonite, and maybe if some sanity had been used not too many years ago, fuel economy might’ve been viewed as more important than outright HP and overcompensation for certain shortcomings.
ST

These porky designs will be darwined out pretty soon, I hope

We can only hop & wish, Varwall. Wouldn’t being on the road be a much more pleasant place to be without these road pigs??

I wish it only cost that much to fill the MINI here in Oz… Our petrol is expected to hit AUD $1.60/litre this week. At 50 litres/tank that’s approx USD$75 to fill her up! Just lucky we don’t have Euro prices… yet!
Brent Breon

I cried today when I spent over $50 to fill my MINI too. I can remember spending $50 in 2002 to fill my Avalanche and deciding it was time to sell it to get our first MINI in 2003. Guess I have to get a Moped now……….
http://MINIpassion.co.za Timmee

I’m Johannesburg, South Africa and drive a Toyota Yaris with a 1000cc 3 cylinder engine and a “brutal” output of 51kW (38hp) as my everyday car. Handling is similar to a large chest freezer. Acceleration: a “blistering” 15 seconds 0 to 62mph.

I use the GP when I feel like I need to have some fun.

1 US gallon = 3.785 litres 1 mile = 1.6093 kilometres

I use 6.1 litres per 100km in town Converts to 1.612 Gallons per 62.139 miles Equates to 38.55 miles per gallon in town.

1 US$ = 7.65 South African Rand I use 95 octane unleaded at ZAR8.91 per litre. Equates to US$1.165 per litre Equates to US$4.41 per gallon

Typically I fill up with 38 litres (10 Gallons) of fuel that costs around US$44 after having driven about 380 miles.

This is about half of what the GP uses in town.

Why a Toyota Yaris? Well, apart from the great in-town gas mileage (IMO), and low emissions, it is the only car in it’s price range with a high NCAP safety rating, helped by dual front airbags, ABS and CBC. It is also more spacious than its competitors. I kinda like the sound of the 3 cylinder engine.

The car with optional AC cost me ZAR99 000 (About US$13 k). An R56 Cooper costs ZAR194k (About US$25360).

Our cheapest car is a Chevy Spark at ZAR66560 (About US$8700). But then I’d rather buy something second hand with AC and some semblance of safety features.

We typically get most or all of the Euro econoboxes here, albeit in stripped down non-luxury mode.

These are the most prominent type of vehicle on our roads, as we have laughable public transport infrastructure – almost everyone drives.
Robert Livesey

I’m sorry but I have no sympathy with Americans moaning about the price of petrol. Even taking into account the discrepency between a US gallon and a UK gallon, it’s still peanuts compared to what we have to pay in rip-off Britain.
Ian F

Sadly, the posted increase in Focus sales may justify to Ford the need to never bring the Euro car here… although they did admit while the US-only redesign was originally intended to save money vs. adapting the Euro version, it ended up costing considerably more.

It’s possible Ford is closely watching how well GM does with the Saturn re-badged Opel models here. If they prove profitable for GM, then there’s hope we’ll see more Euro Fords cross the Pond as well.

Fortunately, it seems that US car makers are finally starting to realize that is doesn’t matter how many cars you sell, but whether or not you actually make money selling them. For too long, they’ve tied profits to the number of cars sold and if they didn’t reach that number they were screwed.
neuron

Ford posted profit in the the 1st quarter- all from oversea sales. Domestic sales was still bad (likely for above mentioned reason. It would be nice the see Ka here. Checkout the commercial for Sportka on youtube.
glangford

I agree with C4 about Europe. I was just in Germany. I saw a new Festiva and it looked like a really nice well built car. I also liked the Audi A2, not to mention the diesel version of the Smart Car. For practicality, I really liked the Mercedes A Series, plenty of room for four, but yet small and efficient, of course available in diesel. All in all it was a small car paradise.

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