At the unveiling of the Verve concept car, one of Ford CEO Alan Mulally's minions stepped up to the microphone at the Detroit Auto Show and [dare I say boldly] declared that "Europe is our future." When pressed on the which cars when part of this meta-point, Big Al stretched the boundaries of the word "vague" to near-breaking point. "We plan to import cars from Europe at some time in the future." Meanwhile, the Honda Civic-like (with European Blue Oval design cues) Verve looks ready for production– though shod with red wall tires straight from the Hot Wheels School of Design. Ford also hinted there could be a three-door version, if you know, there is. Let's hope the car's acceleration matches the speed at which the FoMoCo's flackmeister went over the Verve's salient features.
Click here for TTAC's pictures of the Ford Verve Concept
[reported by Sajeev Mehta]
I am a huge fan of hatchbacks but as always leary of Ford. The thunk the doors make when shutting them on any Ford always give me pause.
Now the BMW 1 Series hatch I could get behind!
When can i buy a C-Max in North America? Why is it taking so long to bring the euro cars over?
When they sell it here are they going to call it a Verve or a Focus?
Ford needs to stick with one name like Toyota did with the Corolla and stop running away from their established brand names.
It seems to me when viewing the Ford of Europe product lineup vs. Ford NA that the comment “Europe is our future” is referring to Ford’s plans to shut down NA operations completely and focus entirely on selling vehicles in Europe.
It seems to me when viewing the Ford of Europe product lineup vs. Ford NA that the comment “Europe is our future” is referring to Ford’s plans to shut down NA operations completely and focus entirely on selling vehicles in Europe.
I am sure that Toyota and Honda will be very helpful in making this possible. Ford is like a bunch of DoDo’s. They are going extinct and will not do the necessary things in NA to keep them alive. Europe gets all the good models and we get the leftovers. And they are paying Mulally Millions to maintain the status quo. Hello!!!!
This is what the 2008 Focus was supposed to look like, unlike the banana peel from hell they are selling right now.
My understanding is that the Verve is quite a bit smaller than the current Focus (both European and American versions).
It looks good NOW. If they can get it over here before everyone has moved on to the next new thing, Ford would have a good chance of selling a few. The way Ford seems to run things, it probably won’t be available in the U.S. until 2012 or so.
Mulally speaks like Jesus in parables. `Europe is our future!` If I insert babel fish in my ear and get translation , it sounds the following-` We are unable to construct any meaningful car ourselves. let`s import a german engineered tin on a japanese platform.` Amen.
FYI.
Verve will replace the Fiesta in Europe, the model below the Focus.
The old MY99 Focus (CW170) was restyled in North America for MY07/08 rather than replaced by the latest European Focus (C307), because it was too costly a design (investment & BOM) for North America.
How will Ford manage to make the Verve/Fiesta cost competitive for North America??
There is a basic problem in selling European designed vehicles in the USA, which is that Europeans are prepared to pay substantially higher prices for smaller vehicles such as the Verve or Focus than Americans.
In European this size of vehicle is low end family transport, in the USA they are primarily entry vehicles for young people.
I can’t access the pixamo photos, the website is blocked by the company netnanny, but the picture above looks like a cross between the Peugeot 207 and a Swindon (UK) Civic.
I agree, this car looks good, but once you put regular wheels on it and remove the (in UK) illegal window tint, it’ll look less Hot Wheels, and more pedestrian.
What I want to know is why all current car design seems to be attempting to make the car look faster by smearing the headlights up the bonnet (hood) to the door mirrors…