Autoblog

psarhjinian @ Jan 31st 2008 1:00PM

There's two factors here:
-Americans generally don't want to buy premium small cars
-Many manufacturers cannot stomach the idea of a loss leader.

GM definitely falls into the second category. They're more than willing to make worldbeater cars with fat margins, but they're less willing to eat margin on cheap cars in hopes people will return to the showroom later.

This is changing (the Malibu is probably the first fully competitive GM car in a long while) but the closest an American car company has ever come to this is Ford with the first-gen Focus. When it was released, it was so much better than the competition that Toyota and Honda had to go through two model cycles before either produced anything as good.

The problem with the Focus is that Ford couldn't stomach the cost. It didn't help that they had teething problems either, as the Focus' chances were hurt rather badly by it's first two years' reputation. Hence, it was decontended twice and a platform change put off, well, nearly a decade. It hasn't sold well, and the experience (while thoroughly Ford's fault) has probably put all three American makers off the idea of a premium small car.

GM will never, ever, release a good small car in North America. They're far too focused on quarterly sales and/or far too cash-poor to invest in something with such a small return.