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[quote]New York Auto Show Offers
Hints of a European Future
March 24, 2008

Americans have struggled since the beginning of the republic with how much to emulate European tastes in clothes and politics. When it came to cars, however, the U.S. market has had little in common with the Continent for most of the past 60 years. That could be about to change.

Consider some of the cars featured at this week's New York Auto Show: Ford Motor Co. unveiled a prototype for a New York City taxi built on a van Ford sells in Europe called the Transit Connect. Company executives talked up their plans to bring several more European Fords to America, including the sharp looking Fiesta subcompact.
[NY auto show slideshow]
Alex DiSuvero for WSJ.com
Read the Auto Show Tracker for more from New York and see video reports from the show floor.

General Motors Corp.'s Saturn brand is already offering some attractive Euro-designed models, among them a version of the Opel Astra compact car (Read review). Volkswagen AG, meanwhile, is touting plans to as much as triple its U.S. sales and may build a factory in the U.S. to do it. BMW AG just launched its compact 1-Series in the U.S., which has been on the market in Europe for more than a year. (The U.S. 1-Series is different. It's a coupe, not a hatchback.)

In New York, Mercedes-Benz unveiled three models equipped with its "BlueTec" European diesel engines. Acura showed off a new TSX, which is essentially a European Honda Accord. Honda also featured a redesigned Fit minicar for the U.S. that is already sold in Europe as the Jazz. (See this funny German ad for the Jazz.)

Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the Continental drift in the U.S. market's tastes is Daimler AG's ultra-tiny Smart Fortwo (Read review). So far, about 1,800 Fortwos have been delivered in America. But another 30,000 customers have put down $99 through the company's Web site to reserve a Fortwo, according to a spokesman. (Nissan Motor Corp., separately, teased minicar fanciers with an electric prototype of its funky Cube car, which is a Japanese market model today, but will come to the U.S. in a year or two, after its next redesign.)
[Renault Kangoo]
Renault
Renault's Kangoo

It will be a long time, if ever, before a Belgian arriving in Chicago will look around and think, "Alors, they drive the same cars we do at home." There's no sign Americans are very excited about French cars, for instance. It's not likely that large Ford F-Series pickups or Chevy Silverados will vanish from American roads to be replaced by the wonky little car-trucks like Renault's Kangoo Express that European tradesmen use instead.

Some new models in New York owed nothing to the Old World. Chrysler LLC's big noise was a rollout for its expanded lineup of Dodge Challengers, the latest entrant in the hunt for the spare dollars of graying boomers who missed muscle cars the first time around. Fans of another retro muscle car, the Chevy Camaro, will just have to be patient. Your car's still being readied by GM's Australian engineering team. But even with these muscle cars there are concessions to the new oil price environment: GM may consider offering a Camaro with a four-cylinder engine, while Chrysler is touting a version of the Challenger with a V6 motor.


Readers, over to you: Do you think V6 or four-cylinder powered Dodge Challengers and Chevrolet Camaros will catch on with car buyers? Discuss.

The tilt toward vehicles that seem European -- because they are compact, space efficient and powered by small displacement four-cylinder or diesel engines -- reflects several challenges confronting all auto makers that contend in the U.S. market.

One's obvious. Gasoline prices in America are above $3 a gallon, and have hung around that level long enough that consumers are starting to shift their buying patterns. In early