The Follow-Up Part 1

So last week I did a podcast, and there were some ideas discussed that I'd like to expand on this week.

First of all, thanks again to Matt Hardigree, News Editor of Jalopnik.com who took some time out of his busy day to talk with me. He really had some great ideas, and I'd like to talk about some of them some more.

Matt talked about how, with key markets, size classes have actually shifted up as cars have been getting bigger and bigger over the past few decades. If you think about sedans, there are really 4 main classes: subcompacts, compacts, midsize, and full-size. But, if you compare the 2000s and the 1980s, the subcompacts of today would have been called compacts, the compacts of today would have been called midsize, and the midsized of today would have been called full-size.

He provided a great example with the Ford Taurus and the Ford Fusion, so I'll illustrate his point with a few pictures.

Obviously, the red car in the middle is the 2010 Ford Taurus. The other red car is a late-80s Taurus, and the blue car is a mid-90s Taurus. The Taurus used to define the mid-sized segment and compete with the Camry and Accord, but now it's one of the largest sedans on the road.

Instead, the Fusion, a new nameplate introduced in 2006, has now taken the place of the Taurus as Ford's midsized car. But, my question is, why does Ford need both?

Another idea that Matt brought up was that of manufacturers working to increase fuel economy while skipping the step of losing weight. Hybrid cars have obviously proven themselves as practical and efficient, but the technology is heavy. Batteries add weight to a car, which detracts from fuel economy.

I liked how Matt referred to it as the manufacturers working against themselves. It seems to me as if they are almost skipping a step towards their ultimate goal of efficiency. They're working twice as hard to increase fuel economy because they're attempting to do so with heavier and heavier cars. In many cases, the same fuel economy gain that can be achieved by adding a hybrid powertrain to a car could be achieved by simply shedding weight.