Is shift to small cars here to stay?

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2008 | by James R. Healey

Americans' switch to buying smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles is permanent, not a temporary shunning of big SUVs while they wait for record fuel prices to drop, Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally says.

Mulally says the stampede is a "structural change" and if, as Ford predicts, fuel prices stay up, "That shift to small and medium-size cars and utilities ... is going to be permanent."

Detroit automakers are accelerating development of fuel-efficient cars, hoping not to surrender huge chunks of the auto market to foreign-brand small cars, as they did during the fuel shortages and high prices in the 1970s and early '80s. Even so, Mulally is first to declare the move to small vehicles will last.

Certainly it has been dramatic.

The first four...