Reply #8: well it's a complicated issue really

[lithiumbomb]

There's more to it than the US makers not being in tune with what the public is interested in. That's certainly a component, but they're simply not currently structured to make money on small fuel efficient cars. The Big Three (or 2 1/2 depending on how you view Chrysler) lose money on all the small cars they make for sale in this country. Let's take the Ford Focus for example. Introduced in the late 90s worldwide, it was a well engineerd and well received car. In Europe this is a family car, sold for a family car price. In the US, that class of vehicle fits in to a lower price point. They're not family cars over here, they're economy cars. Ford is able to make money on the european Focus (or maybe they aren't) when it's sold for the equivalent of 20k US dollars, but for the US market it has to start at about 12 grand. Even though it's made in Mexico, they still lose _thousands_ per unit sold.

Since the big 3 have heavy comittments to their health and retirement plans from when they were much larger companies (remember GM alone was once 50% of the US car market), they needed to build profitable vehicles to stay solvent. So they put all their development towards SUVs, making 10-20k on each one in profit. They can design the best compact car on the planet, but if they lose money on each one, there's no point.

There is obviously a market for small efficient cars in this country though. However I suspect Ford and GM will have to go through a bankruptcy first to relieve themselves of their financial commitments before they can make them profitably. They have not been healthy companies for quite some time, even when they were still making a profit.

Sidenote on hybrids-
Hybrids are expensive cars to make. They do _not_ make money for their makers yet. This is one reason Toyota pushes versions of the Prius that approach 30-35 grand. More options means more profit. A more cost effective way to save money on gas is to buy a Toyota Yaris (40mpg highway) for about $12k.