First of all I want to reassure all of Ford Fusion owners out there that there’s nothing wrong with their cars, this is not an article about some hidden defect of this model produced by Ford. That being out of the way I want to be clear that I believe there is something absolutely wrong with Ford’s management and/or market research team.

In this article I want to compare two of Ford’s car models, one is the Ford Fusion Hybrid sold in the US, the most fuel efficient car Ford has to offer to the American consumer and the other is the most powerful, gas-guzzling Ford Fusion sold in Britain.

Although the two models bear the same name they are two very different cars , about the only thing they have in common is that they are both 5 seaters. The American version is a big, 190" long sedan with a 100 cu ft trunk capacity and the British car is a 160" long hatchback. The cars do not even look the same, at least not anymore; the 2009 US version of the Focus resembled quite closely its European cousin.

As different as the two cars are there is one completely unexpected similarity between them …fuel consumption. Yes you read that right the much praised Ford hybrid car-model is almost as efficient as the most powerful, biggest engine, class D CO2 emission, one year older European version of the same car. Actually the British car it’s even better outside the city, with a 53.3 mpg vs. the 41mpg for the Focus Hybrid

I could not find any data regarding CO2 emissions for the American version but we can assume that they are also pretty close to the 157 g/km the British version has. Ford is forced to release this data for the European market.

Another lapse in data is about the performance of the American model but there is no doubt that the 191 hp, 2.5 petrol engine can muster a top speed far greater than 111 mph of the European car, and can reach 60 mph much faster than the 11.1 seconds of the same car.

When I began writing this I wanted to compare the new Ford hybrid to some really small Japanese or European car, but when I visited the company’s British site and discovered that all but one British version for the Fusion were by far more fuel efficient than the Focus US Hybrid I realized that there is no point in trying to make the car look bad, Ford did it for me.

Another thing I discovered, much to my amazement was that there are other hybrid cars that are less efficient than the Focus, they even have a site comparing Focus with all those other cars.

That last fact led me to believe that the American car manufacturers care more about the Hybrid label they can stick on their models then they do about fuel efficiency and satisfying the obvious demand for cars that consume less fuel . What I will never understand is why do they prefer to practically cheat their customers this way instead of delivering a product that truly responds to their needs and demands. They certainly proved in Europe that they can build more fuel efficient cars, just take a look at the 1.4 Diesel engine Ford Focus with a gas mileage of over 70 mpg for highway use.