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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

“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.

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.