The Fiat 500 will be a failure in the US, says Ford president Alan Mulally. Pointing out that the only A segment vehicle to have tried its luck in America was the Smart (which was unsuccessful), Mulally says: “I don’t see much market space for a car that’s smaller than the Fiesta. Anyone who’s tried has failed.”

In the next few months, the Fiat 500 will be joined in the US car market by the Scion iQ, whose future in this market is doubtful, too. The comments come from an interview with Italian magazine, Panorama, and indicate just how interested the Italians are in how their national brands will fare in their new adventure over the ocean. Mulally has also developed the same idea of Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne: that in the future, the world will have just six large automobile groups.

He says: “At the end of the financial crisis, no more than six automobile companies around the world will exist. And I believe that the problem is not how many cars will be produced, but how we will earn on the cars that are sold.” It’s not all bleak news, though, as Mulally predicts a 10 percent increase in the market this year, and that finally hybrid models will start to make their presence felt come 2020: “in 2020 between 10 and 25 percent of cars sold will have some kind of electric features, and we think most of them will be hybrid models.”

Could he be underestimating the Fiat 500 though? After all, the Smart had some mechanical issues that didn’t go down well with the US public, and it was lacking the cutesy style that the 500 is counting on. So far the US reaction to the Fiat 500 has been positive, but with the first edition models arriving these days, the future of the DolceVita vision in a big car world remains in the balance.

Source | Autoblog.it

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