Ford’s facing one of the toughest challenges in automotive product planning: how to offer the competitive compact pickup consumers say they want without cannibalizing far more profitable full-sized trucks. The solution? Don’t offer a competitive compact pickup. “It’s no secret we have a new Ranger coming globally. We’re working on one for all the other markets in the world,” Ford’s Derrick Kuzak tells Pickuptrucks.com. “The difference is that all of those other markets only have a Ranger. They don’t have an F-150 above it.” See how that works? But don’t worry, Ranger fans. Ford has your effete, pathetic backs…

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The Detroit Free Press reports that a recent filing by the California Air Resources Board [Full filing in PDF format here] threatens that a rapid ramp-up to the proposed 35.5 mpg 2016 standard and a reduction in zero-emission vehicle credits are necessary “to ensure California’s continued support.” CARB spokesman Stanley Young explains that “what we wanted to do is convey the level of importance for these two issues,” and that it’s “too early” to say whether California will withdraw from its compromise with the Obama administration. Still, the threat of a California withdrawal should be enough to get some attention in Washington, as Obama adviser David Axelrod has called the emissions compromise one of the administration’s top accomplishments of 2009.

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Let’s pretend they never happened because… well… we’re still waiting for them. Sure, on the surface things could be worse. Real estate is getting to be cheap. Cars are getting even cheaper. We seem to be in this period of mild deflation where ‘deficits don’t matter’ and interest rates remain low thanks to China. It’s a debtly paradise that will eventually turn our economy upside down, but for now it’s all good. As John Fogerty used to say, “There’s a calm before the storm, I know it’s been calmin’ for some time.” I’m not convinced that hyperinflation will be on that menu, but a happy-go-lucky tightwad like me realizes that books and reality need to be balanced no matter what. So…

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The news coming out of India has been dominated by talk of the booming small car market, there’s another development which deserves some attention. The Economic Times of India reports that after two years of testing, India’s government is about to roll out a star rating system for (get this) fuel efficiency. The star rating system is voluntary for the first year, but starting next year the system becomes mandatory. The ET explains:

The proposed label will not only suggest the new car’s ideal mileage but also tell the buyer how the car performs compared to other models in the same category. The categories would be created on the basis of the vehicle’s weight. The best performer would be given 5 stars and the others would get fewer stars depending on their mileage. At the moment, sources in the government suggest not many cars are able to hit the top category.

Quick, someone bring me the forms I need to fill out to register my displeasure!

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Idle-stop technology, which turns off a car’s engine instead of idling, is available from a number of automakers in the European and Japanese markets. Mazda claims nearly half of its Mazda3 compacts and Biante minivans sold in Japan are ordered with the $500 option, as consumers seek out fuel economy improvement without the cost of a full hybrid system. So, why doesn’t Mazda sell idle-stop equipped cars in the US? According to the company, though Japanese fuel economy tests show stop-start improving efficiency by seven to nine percent “the EPA city-mode test cycle includes only one complete vehicle stop, so stop-start technology registers only a 0.1- or 0.2-mpg improvement.” And who would pay $500 for that?

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When Infiniti’s new M sports sedan hits the market next year, it will be available with an optional tech package that includes a mighty strange feature for a sports sedan. A so-called Eco-pedal will actually resist you overactive right foot, providing feedback that Nissan says is intended to discourage inefficient (read: enjoyable) driving styles. The payoff is supposedly a five to ten percent improvement in efficiency, although convincingly proving causality for those results can’t be easy. After all, if you’re driving for efficiency, you don’t need the gas pedal to be telling you to go easy. Luckily, even if you do pay more for the package that includes this feature, it will be switch-offable. Or ignorable. “The driver can easily disregard the resistance,” Infiniti product planning director John Weiner tells Automotive News [sub], “or turn it off altogether. But if you heed the signal and do as prompted, it can improve fuel economy.” Whatever happened to those “upshift now” lights that were so popular on the dashboards of cars in the 80s?

“You’re going to see it of course in the 3 Series,” BMW’s Tom Baloga tells Inside Line, “and the 5 Series is a good possibility. If the performance [of such an engine] is sufficient in the X3, U.S. customers would likely accept it in the X5 as well.” The “it” he’s referring to is BMW’s two liter turbodiesel engine, which BMW hopes will soon make up 10 to 20 percent of its engine mix in the US. And the Bavarians aren’t bringing the diesel four over for mere miserly mileage alone. “We would be focusing to make sure we get the performance that people expect without squeezing every last mile per gallon out of it,” Baloga says. “I don’t think we would ever consciously look at [the VW Jetta TDI’s] numbers and say ‘we have to beat that.'”
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Brace yourself ladies and gentlemen, because an automaker is taking on one of the American market’s greatest bugbears: size and weight bloat. Mazda’s vehicles have gained 80 pounds on average with each recent redesign, according to Robert Davis, senior vice president of product development and quality for Mazda North American Operations. Davis tells Automotive News [sub] that increases are coming “mostly in larger tires and wheels, and safety equipment,” resulting in a 2010 Mazda3 that weighs 2,868 pounds compared to a 2003 Protege’s 2,634 pounds. And, says Davis, that’s all about to change. He promises “typical” weight reductions of 220 pounds per vehicle on future Mazda models, through a combination of measures. For one thing, dimensional creep is a thing of the past, with some Mazda models scheduled to lose as much as three inches in length.

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Some politicians who supported the Cash for Clunkers program didn’t want to be seen promoting a billion dollar (or three) bailout for car dealers, what with car dealers rating just above sex offenders as “people who I’d like to support with my taxes.” So, not surprisingly, the C4C bill was wrapped in a mantle of green; structured to reward buyers who traded gas guzzlers for [marginally] more fuel efficient vehicles. In practice, the “program mostly involved swaps of old Ford or Chevrolet pickups for new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press. The single most common swap — which occurred more than 8,200 times — involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the clunkers.” It gets worse . . .

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