Could this be the B segment car that Alan Mulally obliquely referred to between
Shrub jokes during his
NYIAS keynote? What we have here is a Mazda Versia, a
JDM car that Ford may be considering bringing to the US. That'd explain it tooling around the Dearborn area, and it looks like it was snagged in
California a while ago, too. It'd slot nicely under the Focus and inject some new life into small cars at Ford. We're thinking that the "I made it myself" bodywork of this mule is
not
an attempt to appeal to the bodykit and bewinged crowd, and just hastily assembled for engineering tests. Powered by a 1.6-liter four cylinder,
fuel economy should be solidly in the 30s, while the Mazda roots at least hold the potential that it'll run with the Honda Fit. That's our hope, anyway -- because the worst case scenario has it
recalling the
Aspire.
[Source: Popular Mechanics]
[Source: Popular Mechanics]