Mercedes A, B Class Get Down In Motown

If you journey to the Detroit Auto Show this winter, you will get a chance to see the new Mercedes A and B Class models. I know, I know. Who cares, right? (No points for guessing Automotive News [sub]) Especially since the Benz Boys will be headlining their Concept BlueZero hybrid/alt-fuel roadshow at the wasteland formerly known as the Detroit Auto Show. But did you know that all of those fancy futuremobiles will be based on the “sandwich board” platform which first debuted in production on the original A-Class? Apparently it makes for a lot of flexibility with powertrain choices. The new A and B will ditch the intriguing but space-limiting concept for a standard FWD layout, but at least the B and “likely” the A as are headed stateside sometime in 2011. Absent a GM bankruptcy-triggered end of times, of course. And though we won’t be in Detroit to snap our own photos of these Euro-hatches (right, boss?), their American ambitions bring up a wrinkle on the stimulating discussion on our national ambivalence towards compact cars.

Honda sold the Jazz abroad for nearly five years before bringing it here as the Fit. Toyota has been selling a Yaris hatchback in Europe since 1999. Mercedes has sold an A-class since 1997. Fit and Yaris sales have been as hot as anything else this year, although gas prices clearly drove sales. Still, it seems to me that foreign automakers kept their sub-compact and compact vehicles out of the US market because they thought Americans were biased against them. Even though efficiency and practicality were central to their early success, the Japanese brands kept quality subcompacts from the market while their US offerings became larger and heavier with every year.

Was it, as John McCain might put it, that they came to change the American market and the American market changed them? Or is this all a mechanical function of the price at the pump? If there is a bias against compact (and sub-compact) cars in this country, is it the product of a Detroit profit-driving marketing strategy? Or a natural outgrowth of the American landscape and lifestyle? And where the rubber really meets the second-guessing, should the Fit, Yaris and now the A-class have been brought to America sooner than they were/are?