Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot, Renault and More
Great European Cars We Wish We Could Have
By GARY HOFFMAN, AOL AUTOS
Dan Magestro with his Toyota Yaris
Dan Magestro didn't think he was asking for all that much: The Ohio State University researcher wanted to buy a Ka, Ford of Europe's tiny, 2,900-pound city car, and bring it into the United States for his own use.As a nuclear physics Ph.D. who switched to financial engineering, Magestro figured he was certainly up to the task of tackling the relevant federal regulations. After spending two years in Europe, he had decided he liked many of their small, fuel efficient and functional cars.In Pictures: Cars That We Want But We Can't HaveHe never got his Ka. Instead, he got an education on just how hard it is to buy a car when no one wants to sell it and everyone seems determined to keep you from getting it.In his research, he found out that a Ka was priced at about $7,000, and it would have cost him about $3,000 to bring it to the U.S. That was fine with him. "That still would have made it about the cheapest car here," Magestro says. But reconfiguring it for U.S. standards might have cost him many thousands more. Ultimately, it proved impossible.
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He ended up buying a Toyota Yaris instead. It had a European feel (it was designed in the Japanese automaker's studios in Europe) and more advanced technology than the aging Ka model line. Best of all, it was becoming available in the U.S. just as his hopes for a Ka were fading into oblivion.But Magestro hasn't stopped beating the drum for easier ways to buy European cars. Many European models are perfect for the North American market, offering a fuel economy and smaller scale suited to higher fuel prices, he says. They are driven on streets and highways roughly equivalent to those in the U.S.
Sales data shown is of top 20 selling cars and trucks as compiled by Autodata Corporation.
Yet many don't make it. The automakers themselves often balk at the risks of importing a new model. They know that Volkswagen, Europe's largest manufacturer, has only a tiny market share in the U.S, and that the French firms Renault and Peugeot fled a hotly contested U.S. market in the 1980s and early 1990s."It's tremendously competitive here," said Cody Lusk, CEO of American International Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group that represents international nameplate dealers. So it's no surprise that U.S., European and Asian manufacturers are careful about any new undertaking. "The American customer is one of the most demanding, fickle and discerning consumers around the globe," Lusk said.A car like the Ka might have seemed small and inoffensive enough to slip through the bureaucracy. Magestro found out otherwise. The biggest problem was that the Ka was not on the federal Department of Transportation's official list of vehicles that could be reconfigured to meet U.S. requirements."If it's not on that list, you can't bring it from the port to the road," said Magestro. "The more I looked at it, the more I realized it was just impossible.""You have to change the angle of the headlight and some other safety features of a car you are bringing into the country, unless it is already designed to U.S. standards. But with the Ka, it was just impossible to configure it that way."In many cases, individual owners find it extremely difficult to make their imports "street legal," a process known as "homologation," importers say. That may mean meeting different requirements for low-speed collisions, rollovers and a host of other criteria. Auto Enterprises in Birmingham, Mich. is one of about 40 firms approved to adapt cars to U.S. safety and emissions standards. It mostly handles the somewhat easier adaptations for vehicles leaving or entering Canada. It helps that standards in the two countries are similar and that most cars in Canada have counterparts in the United States."But if you have a car like the BMW 1 Series or Smart, where there is no comparable version in the United States, you are basically starting out as if you were the original manufacturer," said Phil Trupiano, the company's owner. "You have to do all the modification, testing and certification that the original manufacturer didn't do, in order to be able to own the car in the United States."
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If a model hasn't been crash-tested according to U.S. standards, the importer will have to arrange for its own tests. But it only makes sense to crash a vehicle if hundreds of vehicles are being brought in. No one is crazy enough to destroy one vehicle just to be able drive a second one on U.S. roads.Manufacturers have an easier time with homologation, although it's still a challenge. "That's a huge issue that probably adds another $5,000 per vehicle to bring something over here," Lusk says.But all this caution means that American consumers are missing out on a whole galaxy of European offerings: the Fiat, Renault, Skoda, Peugeot, Seat and Citroen model lines, among others. That's everything from the affordable Logan Dacia subcompact, a Renault offshoot costing around $6,100, to the Peugeot 407 coupe, priced at about $57,000, and beyond. If anything, there's a much broader price range in Europe than currently found in the U.S.The quirky Citroen C6 would certainly be a welcome addition to U.S. highways, too. It features a heads-up display, lane-assist warning system, active pedestrian protection hood, adaptive lighting and innovative frameless windows that follow the arch of the roof. Prices for the Citroen C6 start at $57,000, though you would be driving the car that former French President Jacques Chirac chose as his official vehicle.
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The real heartbreakers are the Alfa Romeo models. While you can easily get a BMW 3 Series in the U.S, American consumers haven't been able to buy the sporty Alfa Romeo Brera. The $35,000 mid-sized coupe has been on sale in Europe since 2005. Similarly, they can't buy the Alfa Romeo 159, a compact executive car that starts at the equivalent of $39,000 in Europe.For the disappointed customer, only one practical solution remains: wait and see if a model eventually makes it to the U.S. That is happening more and more. Plans to introduce the Smart car brand from Mercedes-Benz and Saturn offshoots of GM Europe's Opel Astra and Vectra models are indications of that.Ford is apparently talking about a U.S. introduction for a version of the C-Max, a popular multipurpose vehicle that has been unavailable to American consumers for more than three years.The Alfa Romeo Brera and 159 are also expected in the U.S. in 2010 or 2011. Mercedes-Benz is expected to introduce its B-Class multipurpose vehicle in the same time frame.In Pictures: Cars That We Want But We Can't Have

It is a good thing that auto engineers have ignored many of the "innovations" found in concept cars over the last half-century. Our lives just wouldn't be the same if even a fraction of the great miscalculations of the past ever had made it into our vehicles.In the worst-case scenario, your car today could be a bubble-topped, six-wheeled freeway cruiser, complete with zebra skin and lion fur upholstery, with two rifles tucked between the front seats and a nuclear power plant at your rear.In Pictures: Cool Concept Cars of the PastThe concept car phenomenon began far more innocently than that. In 1938, legendary GM designer Harley Earl incorporated power windows and a power-driven convertible top into his Buick "Y-Job." Considered the first concept car , it was a straightforward demonstration of new technologies, not a new production model.But once they no longer had to design real cars all the time, big three designers felt a new freedom to indulge their creativity with concept cars. As a result, the 1950s and early 1960s became the heyday of wacky concept cars. Imaginations soared as high as the newly built jet fighters roaring overhead.
1961 Ford Gyron
With that inspiration, it's no surprise that aerodynamic motifs, including outlandish fins, would reach perfection on concept cars before gracing production cars later in the decade. They remind us how even a silly, overly ostentatious treatment can be carried along in the slipstream of a new design, if only for a few years.At one point, Ford's fascination with new technologies found expression in a streamlined, two-wheeled concept car shaped like a flattened cigar, the Gyron. Designers thought the Gyron's two-wheel stance and its built-in gyroscope would improve its cornering.In their headlong pursuit of gadgetry, they offered an infrared "snooperscope" as an accessory that would help the driver see in bad weather. According to a Ford news release of the time, the 1961 Gyron concept car was also equipped with a microphone at its rear, presumably so the "oohs" and "aahs" of passers-by could be easily heard inside.The propulsion would have to come from a fuel cell system, since no internal combustion engine known at the time would fit into it.Jet cockpits inspired concept car designers as well, fueling their obsession with developing a whole new body style rivaling the convertible. Plexiglas, introduced in the 1930s, gave them the perfect material for the job. Assorted canopies, bubbles and clear roof cutouts soon appeared on concept cars at auto shows, and a few modest versions even appeared on production vehicles.
1958 Ford Nucleon
No one seemed too worried about the structural integrity of the new body style. "If you have a Plexiglas roof panel above you, it's not going to be as strong as a solid roof panel," says Bob Casey, curator of transportation at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich. Lives were no doubt saved when a more robust substitute, the sunroof, took hold a few years later.The budding nuclear age provided its own brand of inspiration, without leaving much fallout in its wake, fortunately. In 1958, Ford produced a mock-up of the Ford Nucleon, envisioning a nuclear energy source as its power plant and a range of up to 5,000 miles without recharging. A 1962 Ford concept car, the six-wheeled Seattle-ite, was likewise supposed to be nuclear-powered. Designers only produced it as a three-eighths model, and left the actual nuclear power to the imagination (it has thankfully remained there).
1956 Chrysler Norseman
Concept car designers also loved cantilevers, pushing the limit on how far a roof, steering column or structural component could extend without a direct means of support. The 1956 Chrysler Norseman, was perhaps the pre-eminent example. It was designed to offer panoramic views from the interior, ostensibly making it the perfect vehicle for traveling the nation's new freeways.Its cantilevered roof dispensed with both the A-pillar at the front of the passenger compartment and the B-pillar at its center. It rested lightly on the windshield upfront. "I can't think of a hardtop production vehicle that got rid of the A-pillar," said Barry Dressler, manager of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich."You have to wonder about the structure," he said. "If you were riding over a rough road, any forces on the roof structure would have caused you to crack the glass in the windows." That never happened to the Norseman. It sank with the ill-fated S.S. Andrea Doria ocean liner on July 25, 1956, on its maiden trip to the U.S. from the Ghia studios in Italy, where Chrysler had many of its concept cars built.The Mercury XM Turnpike Cruiser was also designed for the new sensation of freeway driving. This concept car incorporated glass cut-out roofs, with just a single solid band of metal extending over the middle of the passenger compartment to provide at least the appearance of support. The cut-outs supposedly created the illusion that the roof was floating on air.While not necessarily ill-advised, some concept cars simply never panned out. On Ford's 1967 Allegro concept car, the steering column jutted out from the very center of the interior compartment, half way between the driver and passenger, and then took a sharp left over to the driver.A forerunner, the 1956 Ford Mystère, had "a steering wheel that can be positioned in front of either front-seat occupant," according to an auto writer at the time. With just a few more contortions, it might have reached all the way to the backseat drivers (who probably wanted it most of all).
1956 Packard Predictor
Through much of the 1950s, concept car designers seemed absolutely intent on making entering and exiting a vehicle easier. For example, the 1956 Buick Centurion featured seats that automatically slid backwards when the driver climbed aboard.A number of concept cars offered swivel seats that swung out toward the occupant or a roof panel that retreated when the door was opened. Their structural integrity in a crash was just as dubious as the new Plexiglas roofs.In 1956, the Packard Predictor concept car had rooftop doors "that rolled up like the cover of a rolltop desk," as one automotive writer that year put it. That same year, the Oldsmobile Golden Rocket boasted a hinged version of a bubble-top canopy for the same purpose.The 1950s were breathtakingly politically incorrect by today's standards. At the Chicago Auto Show in 1951, the now-defunct Kaiser company displayed a Safari four-door sedan with black and white zebra fur and lion pelts in its interior.
1950 Kaiser Safari
If there were an award for an "over-the-top" auto show presentation, it would go to TV cowboy Dale Robertson, who starred in the "Tales of Wells Fargo" during the 1950s. In 1958, GM went on the auto show circuit with its "Wells Fargo" concept car.In Pictures: Cool Concept Cars of the PastMore show car than concept car, it perfectly captured the decade's glorious excesses. It had cowhide carpeting "fur-side up," a built-in gun rack holding two Winchester 94s between driver and passenger, and pistol holders in the interior door panels.