Ford Flaunts Verve Subcompact

To pull more shoppers closer, Ford has showcased a new subcompact at the Detroit Auto Show. Such was an effort to give auto buffs some hints of the future.

“The Ford global design team remembered, not so fondly, the econo-boxes of the 1970s and created the Verve concept as a vision of just how good a small car can be,” said Ford Design Chief J Mays. “Verve aims to ‘right’ North American buyers’ earlier small-car experiences by offering a product that changes customers’ views of small cars from ‘cheap’ to chic – and from affordable to desirable.”

"We know that when we come out with our small car we have to be a heck of a lot better than our competitors," Mark Fields, Ford's president for the Americas, said in an interview.

“Millennials will be the defining group of customers in the future, driving all types of consumer trends,” said Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president, Marketing and Communications. “Ford’s European-based cars are a great fit for this generation of drivers, who have grown up with the Internet and mobile phones as necessities, not luxuries – believing that bigger isn’t necessarily better, precision is everything and technology rules.”

GizMag describes the Verve as:

“…the concept has been developed with a global product development strategy in mind and the company aims to capitalize on an expected boom in the North American small car segment over the next three years. In the U.S., it's predicted that sales of small cars will grow by 800,000, or 25% – to a record 3.4 million units by 2012 - and small cars and crossovers are the only vehicles with projected near-term growth in the U.S. The driving force in this market is a group of young people aged 13 to 28 years – dubbed ‘Millennials.’ Today, this group stands 1.7 billion strong worldwide and will represent 28% of the total U.S. population by 2010.”

The Verve concept is built off of a design architecture flexible enough to yield 3 unique vehicles. The North American Verve sedan, painted in Rouge Red, has been slightly modified. It features idiosyncratic LED side markers, inverted trapezoidal front lower grille, and sophisticated technology such as dynamic sound system, refined electronic navigation as well as in-car phone functionality.

As I see it, the Verve will surely captivate a good number of car buffs.