Auto-Start-Stop should be available on every engine

Go ahead. Break my heart, again.
I will be posting this on one or more of the blogs I edit under what's become a standard topic: The latest fuel-efficient car we can't buy in the United States.

Smart cars are made in Germany yet find a big enough market here but Ford can't???? One more stupidity!

I am not impressed. I can already hit 71mpg with a 3cyl geo metro using auto stop (well in my case manual stop)
a 1.4 diesel in a car that small should EASILY get 60MPG with JUST the diesel engine and auto stop.
your telling me they added an entire hybrid system and only managed to add 10mpg ??

Ill beleive it when I actually drive it - got a new 1.6 duratorc focus which promised 67 mpg combined and best I can do is 55 combined and 58 if I do long journeys with the speed kept below 65, so I have a hard job beleiving Ford's figures at the moment

Put this into your Commuter Van and I will buy it in a New York heart beat! Please!

but what's it like merging into highway speeds? I certainly don't want a sluggish car struggling to get up to speed as I merge onto 495!

This is a car I feel would be purchased in the US. As to the claim that 350 mil would be needed to produce the diesel engines in a Mexico plant, I don't buy the argument.
I would like to explore the costs of shipping the engines from the Brit plant to Mexico for assembly there or for installing already assembled engines into the Fiesta. I would also like to explore the exchange rate argument. What would it add to the cost of the car and is it really a barrier to entry in the US market?
One of our vehicles is a 2003 Honda Insight and wondered why a diesel version was not available and what the diesel itself would add to the mileage.
I would very much like to buy a diesel vehicle that gets in the neighborhood of 70 mbelieveeleive many Americans are also of the same ilk.

As always the economy one is able to get is down to the type of driving conditions at any given time even if you have experience driving economically. This can vary as much as 10 or 15 mpg from a tank fill even from a highly efficient car such as a hybrid. The figures advertised are in ideal test conditions and what the car is capable of but real world driving is totally different. @ Chris your metro is much smaller, lighter and has less equipment than the Ford so cannot be directly compared, if that engine package was in the Metro you would really have something to bragg about.

What a frigging joke. they could easily just make them in north america.