A Wee Taste of Europe: Will Americans Bite?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/automobiles/autoreviews/12fiesta.html

September 10, 2010
A Wee Taste of Europe: Will Americans Bite?
EZRA DYER

THERE are two types of small cars in America. First, there are the bare-bones, price-is-the-entire-object ennui-boxes. These are the cars you end up driving when you stubbornly resist the $2-a-day upgrade at the rental counter.

A few years back, Chevrolet of Canada caught flak for running an ad for the Cavalier that basically said, “Hey, it’s better than taking the bus.” The pitch offended bus riders and public transportation advocates, but I admire that honesty. Cars that duke it out at the very bottom of the market — like the basest Nissan Versa or Hyundai Accent, each priced around $10,000 — promise mobility, and that’s about it.

It took a long time for car companies to realize that drivers in the United States might consider a small vehicle that wasn’t ruthlessly built to a price. The modern Mini Cooper was the trailblazer, proving that Americans might buy a diminutive hatchback on its own merits, even when they could afford something bigger. Cars like the Mini and the Honda Fit offer a more upscale driving experience than the frill-free automotive flounders that scour the bottom of the market for rental sales, college students and frugal commuters.

The Ford Fiesta is a subcompact in the ambitious Fit idiom. It’s not the least expensive small car you can buy (or even, perhaps, the least expensive Ford). But the 2011 Fiesta hews to the European hatchback ideal, and Europeans hold the bizarre expectation that small vehicles should act like real cars.

First, a bit of history on the nameplate: in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Ford sold a hatchback called the Fiesta. In the late ’80s, it introduced a hatchback named the Festiva. Now we’re back to the Fiesta. I asked Ford what the rationale was behind the Fiesta-to-Festiva-to-Fiesta name change, and the response was, “The Festiva was a different car.”

Right. One which happened to be the smallest Ford hatchback, just like the car it replaced. It’s as if Ford canceled the Mustang, replaced it with a V-8 muscle car named the Mutsvang, and then declared that the two vehicles had nothing to do with each other. And I’m afraid that’s the best answer I have for you on that. This Fiesta is a far cry from the bygone Korean-built Festiva, which came with 12-inch steel wheels suggesting that somewhere, a lawn tractor was up on blocks.

Ford’s new baby is available as a sedan or five-door hatchback and offers upmarket equipment like a 6-speed dual-clutch sequential transmission, heated leather seats and the excellent Sync multimedia system.

There are still a few obvious cost-cutting measures. For instance, the rear brakes are drums, not discs. But then again, so are they on a Maybach — the 1932 Maybach Zeppelin, to be exact.

Rear drums aside, the Fiesta is about as safe as it gets in this class. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety named the Fiesta the first minicar to earn the designation of Top Safety Pick. (The distinction applies to Fiestas built after July, when Ford strengthened the door handles.)

Regardless of the build date, the Fiesta interior has enough air bags to raise the Edmund Fitzgerald. And electronic stability control is standard.

There is one engine, a 1.6-liter 4-cylinder that squeezes out an indifferent 120 horsepower. So the Fiesta is slow. Then again, so are its competitors. But you should not drive alongside rivers near college campuses, because you might get passed by varsity crew teams.

The Fiesta’s best talent is making you forget its size once you’re actually moving down the road. The body is so stiff and quiet that I kept finding myself speeding, despite the modest power.

The suspension quietly soaks up impacts while maintaining a controlled ride — there’s none of the Clydesdale clop you hear when the engineers try to dial a soft ride into an overly flexible chassis. You get a sense that the limits are low but that the car doesn’t mind frolicking on an on-ramp now and then.

Mainly, though, the Fiesta seems optimized for the role it will probably fill for most people: commuting. There’s very little wind noise, you have Sync to handle your smartphone and play podcasts, and the fuel economy is excellent — 40 miles per gallon on the highway, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. When you do need to gas up, Ford’s capless filler is one of those small delights that makes life a little easier.

If you had to spend a couple of hours a day in a Fiesta, my sense is that it would endear itself rather than instill resentment. Hey, you don’t like the color of the cupholder lighting? You can change it, boss. It aims to please, the Fiesta.

The Fiesta is really the exemplar of the domestic hatchback’s newfound respectability. But the main challenge for small cars in America is that there’s not much financial incentive to buy them.

In Europe and Japan, driving a smaller car brings tax advantages. Then there’s the cost of fuel, which is currently more than $6 a gallon in most of Europe. When every mile per gallon and gram of carbon dioxide counts on the bottom line, it makes sense to buy the smallest car that will get you to work on time.

And to that end, the Fiesta is a hit. It’s Ford’s No. 1 seller in Europe, with half a million sold in the last year.

But in the United States, unless your car is subject to the gas-guzzler penalty, the taxman doesn’t care whether you have a 1.6-liter 4 or a 550-horsepower V-8. So the financial rationale for entry-level cars mostly amounts to what you save on the purchase price, relative to the next car up the ladder. And for Ford, there’s precious little breathing room between the Fiesta and its bigger sibling, the Focus.

The Fiesta starts at $13,995 for a basic sedan with a 5-speed manual transmission and can cost more than $21,000 for a loaded five-door SES. A couple of months ago, I grabbed a Ford dealership flier that advertised the 2011 Fiesta SE for $16,895. The same dealership was hawking the 2010 Focus SEL, with a leather interior, for $15,495.

The Focus concedes a few m.p.g. — its highway mileage is in the mid-30s — but it offers more passenger room and 20 extra horsepower. The Fiesta is technologically superior, but will buyers care about a dual-clutch gearbox when they can get more car for less money in the same dealership? I know I’m comparing leftover Focuses with 2011 Fiestas, but even once the Focus is redesigned, there will never be much daylight between these two cars.

At current gas prices, the E.P.A. estimates that fueling up a Focus instead of a Fiesta would cost an extra $219 a year (assuming 15,000 miles of driving). Somehow, I doubt that the prospect of saving 60 cents a day will be the deciding factor in many new-car purchases.

However, it was barely more than two years ago that gasoline passed $4 a gallon and the Honda Civic started outselling the Ford F-150. I’ll wager that gas prices will eventually pass $4 again. And when they do, the Fiesta will be the life of the party.

Who needs a Prius anyway?

http://www.salon.com/mwt/good_life/2007/10/29/prius/

Who needs a Prius anyway?
Plenty of new fuel-efficient cars pollute less than trendy hybrids, without draining your bank account.
By Rebecca Clarren

Oct. 29, 2007 More than a cloth grocery bag or a Nalgene bottle, today's accessory for any hot-blooded environmentalist is a hybrid car. For anyone who can afford the $22,000 price tag, a Toyota Prius and other hybrids announce to the world that you are someone who cares about melting glaciers and the fate of polar bears. People have always bought cars as status symbol. Where would the sports car be without the midlife crisis?

So if you want to pay more than $20,000 to reduce your carbon footprint, brag about your part in reducing dependence on foreign oil, and garner esteem from friends at the natural food store, go right ahead. Just don't be too smug. If hybrids are driving a revolution, it's a televised road trip to marketing heaven.

Hybrids aren't necessarily the most environmentally friendly car on the market, says Jim Kliesch of Greenercars.org. The Web site, sponsored by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, rates cars based on tailpipe emissions, gas usage and factory emissions associated with manufacturing. While the Prius and Honda's hybrid Incite get reported averages of 40 miles per gallon, they're far from the 60 mpg promised on the sticker for city driving. The disconnect is due to an outdated Environmental Protection Agency calculation for fuel economy estimates that fails to include air conditioning, cold-weather driving and high freeway speeds. In October, the EPA implemented its new calculation method for 2008 models. It now claims the Prius gets 45 mpg on the highway.

Part of the hybrids' green allure is that when they idle in traffic or at a stoplight, the battery kicks in and shuts down the polluting gas engine. Even so, several cars on the market, such as the Honda Accord and Volkswagen's Beetle and Rabbit, emit less than hybrids. In fact, Honda's non-hybrid Civic GX (it's natural-gas powered) tops Greencars.org's "Greenest Vehicles of 2007."

Some hybrids don't deserve any kind of green bragging rights. The Lexus RX SUV is designed not for fuel efficiency but for speed and power, and gets an average 30 mpg. That's not bad for an SUV but a host of non-hybrid cars get better gas mileage. So why do hybrid owners deserve tax credits and access to high-occupancy lanes? Such tax credits are window dressing that allow politicians to appear as if they're doing something to help the environment, says Jamie Kitman, the New York bureau chief for Automobile magazine. Congress hasn't increased the federal mileage standard in new trucks and cars since 1985. While the Senate has proposed requiring new automobiles to deliver 35 mpg by 2020; the effort is being derailed not only by Detroit's Big Three but by Prius-maker Toyota, the company that claims to be "moving America forward."

In reality, the cheapest and simplest way to cut carbon emissions is with small, lightweight cars that get good gas mileage. This is good news for me. I'm a journalist. This means I can look forward to a life of small paychecks, and for now hybrids are too expensive for me. So I set out to find a hybrid alternative that can still get me to the mountains, soccer games and, yes, the natural food store.

Daniel Jerzag, a Polish immigrant with a polyester shirt and a sprayed-on salesman smile, was my appointed ambassador to the Honda fleet of non-hybrid cars. A patient man, he took it in stride when I hopped in the back of the Honda Fit, a model that's about a foot shorter than my Subaru, to see if I would be able to sleep in back if I were camping and a torrential downpour caused my tent to feel as watertight as a colander and I needed to sleep in my car. This has happened. It could happen again.

I folded down the back seats and if I lay horizontally, I could just fit (get it!). This probably won't be a viable option for most people: I am only 5 feet tall. However, when I loaded my bike, a cruiser from the 1950s with a basket and fenders, into the back, it fit no problem. "This, ugliest car we've got," said Daniel with his charming broken English.

With a sales pitch like that, clearly he doesn't have to work too hard. Honda Fits are sprinting off the lot. Dealerships report they're mostly sold before they arrive. All sorts of people -- 20-somethings, families, a lot of women in their mid-50s -- buy these cars, said Daniel. While the Honda hybrid gets around 40 mpg, the Fit, for $6,000 less, gets 37 mpg.

Like the Fit and the Civic, the Nissan Versa gets a high score from Greenercars. A joint venture between Nissan and Renault, this $12,000 sedan has a certain French stylish interior with tons of space for a family of four on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. The trunk is small, however; there's no way you'd fit a bike or snowboard inside the car. But during the week I test-drove the Versa, it got me to trails in the forest, my yoga class and, yes, the natural food store, with gas mileage in town that neared 40 miles to the gallon. If I needed extra space, I could always use one of those Kayak or Thule removable roof trunks.

Tom Dwyer, my mechanic in Portland, whose automotive business is eco-certified, says "hybrids are a short-term step to where we need to be, which is a full plug-in." But plans for fully electric cars, thanks in large part to auto industry lobbying against them, and now the popularity of hybrids, have been relegated to the back burner by Detroit and Tokyo.

At best, hybrids remain a relatively expensive option for drivers who want to cut their gas use and emit less pollution; at worst, they're a way for the automotive industry to stall development of something closer to a zero-emission vehicle. So if status isn't at the top of your buying list for a new car, you might be better off indulging your driving vice in a Versa.

-- By Rebecca Clarren