Will small car buyers find Ford?

Two thousand and nine was a very good year for Ford in Canada.

In an industry down 12 per cent, sales were up 7, resulting in a 15 per cent marketshare—the automaker’s best here in seven years. Ford even beat out General Motors in truck sales for the first time in a decade.

All good news for fans of the Blue Oval. But between a shift in consumer tastes, and tighter fuel economy regs on the horizon, small cars—the part of the market the Detroit Three handed over to the imports decades ago—are the future.

So how will Ford handle the shift away from its current best-selling pickups and SUVs to small, European cars, like the new Fiesta, Focus and C-Max making the auto show rounds?

“Our focus for 2010 is to introduce the car side of Ford to customers,” Ford of Canada CEO David Mondragon, (above) told The Crank during last week’s Detroit show media days.

The Crank is in Detroit

Join me over at Wheels.ca's live coverage of this year's Detroit auto show, starting first thing the morning of Monday, January 11.

2010 Detroit: GM to show the smallest GMC ever and a high-performance Buick

At a media sneak preview last week, Government Motors revealed its plans for the upcoming Detroit auto show. Normally, the protocol of these things is to open the kimono, then demand that the info be held (or “embargoed”) until the day of the show.

This not only makes us media types feel special, it’s a type of insurance that the automaker’s news won’t get lost during the hubbub of the show.

Instead, our colleagues over at CanadianDriver decided to reveal all of GM’s offerings. Some expected, some not so much.