A commercial showing the new Ford Fusion being driven off a cliff led David Bowhall to visit a dealer last month for a test drive. The owner of four Mercedes- Benzes in the last five years said it wasn’t much of a leap.
“Boy, that kind of looks like an Aston Martin,” Bowhall, who designs and installs audio-visual equipment, said of his first impression of the car. The hybrid version that Bowhall, 41, plans to buy has many of the same features as the Mercedes C350 he’s replacing, plus it will almost double the fuel economy of his German luxury car and cost about $17,000 less.
The Fusion, redesigned by Ford Motor Co. (F) late last year, has vaulted into the top five models by U.S. sales early in 2013 and is leading a charge by U.S. automakers that are offering the best small and mid-size cars to take on Japan’s in decades. American sedans are providing stiffer competition to stalwarts like Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)’s Camry and steering U.S. auto sales to a fourth-straight annual gain, the longest streak since 2000.