danup

It'd be bad business for Ford to do it, but I've always wished they'd bring this car out in the states. It'd be nice to have something less ugly than the Versa in that price range.

These still look great today—shame they ended up in Mercury and arrived at the moment FWD coupes were in what looks like a permanent decline. To this day all the New Edge cars have aged really well, I wish Ford hadn't given up on it as quickly as they did.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding here—Mulally isn't saying it's a viable replacement for your Ranger, he's saying that most people who bought Rangers bought them for reasons that don't track with yours, something Ford has probably done extensive market research about.

It's not that I didn't see it—I, too, can connect the one dot between the "concept" and the finished product, and have for some time. It's that I think this is representative of a mistake I'm worried Ford is about to make—going to an all-Europe-all-the-time model just as Volkswagen, for instance, has decided that it's not a viable option in the states.

The Fusion will be crucial, but the Kuga/Escape is officially the moment I start worrying about One Ford as it's currently constituted. This market's far more crucial to NA than EU and yet the "winner" seems like a European special. I realize everything about this says RAV4, and that's an extremely successful car in the states, but I'm just not sure One Ford is going to be as flexible as it needs to be—right now it just looks like the global cars are all primarily European in design.

This isn't exactly my style, but I like that it feels less fussy than the Fiesta interior.

Versa is a subcompact in pricerange only, and I can't see Fiesta catching what is basically just a very cheap compact car, but it'd be a minor disappointment if it can't catch Yaris, Fit, Aveo, etc. It's a better car—a much better car than Yaris and Aveo—it's competitively priced, and Ford has the most brand momentum on the planet.

I like this well enough, but the Explorer America concept was considerably more distinct than this—that line about having to send them back to the drawing board because it wasn't daring enough is a joke.

There's only one Kizashi on the local Suzuki lot, and there's been no more than two since it came out. Sad to see it, too—it looks like a nice car.

Well, I prefer it—but I also wouldn't say it's crappy, or "the same" on everything. The Cruze is my least favorite version (aside from the current Aveo); my favorite is the Malibu. I love the three-bar grille, and I drive a Fusion, so I hope this isn't the beginning of me not being a True Ford Fan or something; you don't get very far when you begin by inferring unknowable information from my one statement. But what I like about the Cruze is its simplicity relative to the Focus. That might be bland to some, but I prefer... the only word I can come up with is "broad" design cues. The Focus/Mondeo etc. aesthetic, with all its small-scale details, doesn't do as much for me as the look of the Edge and the Flex, for instance, does.

I prefer the Cruze's styling direction inside and out—wake me up when Kinetic styling is over with, please—but the Focus is likely to be the better car.

I love Paul Rand's work and I love this—I realize Ford's logo is too old to fail, at this point, but I'm not sure if that was true forty years ago.

The "anime styling" may be what does it but I prefer Mazda's current design language, at least in its toned-down production form, to Ford's nü-kinetic stuff, which still seems bland and fussy to me. The old Mazda 5 was dowdy, and this one shares what is honestly just a cheap-looking profile view, but the surface work is a big improvement.

I actually loved the egg-crate grille and (especially) the light bar, but these are handsome updates. The interior is great, too.

I love the sedan, especially the roof-line; the hatch is nice, much better than the last Euro-hatch, but all the exuberance of the original Focus design seems to have been wrung out of the last two. This one just looks like an Astra to me (again, not a bad thing.) Edit: on second thought I love the front three-quarters view of the Focus hatch, so maybe my problem is with the surface detailing on both models—the taillights on the hatch appear to have oozed into their current position and then hardened.

Isn't this demonstrably untrue? Toyota's JDM framework is basically a shot-by-shot remake of the worst excesses of GM in America, the only difference being that it works for them. They've got Daihatsu, Toyota, and Lexus; Daihatsu makes a number of basically identical kei cars that fight for market share not only with each other but with Toyota; Toyota, meanwhile, fights with newly established Lexus for the luxury market with a number of legacy cars like the Crown/Century/Mark series. The Camry is an also-ran in Japan—I didn't see a single one in ten days there a few months ago. It's an also-ran because it is not built for the Japanese market—it's an American car designed to American tastes. There's something to be said for streamlining, but Toyota as an example is only useful for people who are trying to claim, I don't know, that Oldsmobile shouldn't have been abandoned—it is a counterclaim to the One Ford idea, not corroborating evidence for it.

You are seriously confusing correlation with causation here. The Explorer's sales have tanked not because of a bad redesign, although the 2006 redesign seemed like a lateral move to me, they've tanked because nobody is buying off-road, towing-capable SUVs to carry their children to school anymore. If you want to see what the market is for an off-road capable SUV with solid towing numbers—you're looking at it. The consumers who justified such high development spending on the truck-based Explorer, even though that wasn't really what they needed, are gone, and they aren't coming back.

This is not going to be nearly as nice a car as the Fiesta but I prefer the look of the Mazda 2; it seems like a cleaner design. I'm pro-smiley face, too, for what that's worth.

I can't stand the look of the center stack on both regions' Fiestas, but it's one nice-looking car. (I like both American fascias, incidentally.)

That one is beautiful. Too bad they went faux-Euro in the end.

For what it's worth, the mini-site for this car has replaced the one for the Ikon—so this might be a flat-out replacement.

In what possible way does it show this?

I prefer the look of the 2, honestly—it's a lot cleaner.

More sedate, thankfully, than the Fiesta interior, which I still don't like. Those little recessed screens (I associate them here with the Saturn Astra) have always struck me as supremely awkward-looking, though.

I miss the D-pillar taillights—that was my favorite Euro styling cue. This just looks like a Mazda, though to its credit it is a little less fussy than the Mondeo.