Where is Winding Road on the super-silent subject of the true 'mini-van'.  No, not a smaller Caravan or a new Odessey.  How about some information re. the new, small, Eng. Ford delivery van that FORD USA was proposing to bring to the USA?  FINALLY, a light has come on!   It has taken years, but at last ONE US automaker is getting smart enough to address the huge niche market for a smaller commercial vehicle???  Yes!!  WR, meanwhile, is not only below the radar, they are still back on the runway!!  Get with it guys, hammer the nail that sticks up!  What market do you think the US automakers are totally ignoring??  If there is to be movement, even (horrors!) change, someone has to stop regurgitating press releases and get out the sharpened stick ... prod the broad beams and wake up the cattle!!

Meaning what?  How many small businesses do you think would be able to use a smaller van-type vehicle than what the (once) Big Three has deigned to sell them all these years?  How about a van that was small enough to be cheaper to make, buy, and run & was easier to manuever and park, but carried as much or more than many firms ever need to carry at once, and was cute as a bug's ear to boot???  Sure, there are firms that run the roads loaded to the gills, but how many more that have been obliged to over-buy and run a 'resource' that is under-utilized almost every single time they put it out on the road!! 

I recently worked in Europe for a number of years, and all of W. Europe is full of these really neat little delivery vans that are perfect for small 'mom & pop' shops, delivery services, botiques, and many, many more "little operations" than I have time or space to enumerate!   They are so useful that a lot of owners buy them for business and personal transportation, even in countries like the Nederlands, where onerous taxes and staggering fuel prices make ownership of just one 'car' (if any) the 'norm' for most.  If we had half the range of choices they have abroad, I'd buy the 'window van' version of any of several of these, for my own 'next car'!!

Put these smart, efficient charmers anywhere, in urban or suburban settings, and many 'country' locations too, and watch cash-strapped 'shops' start buying them instead of long, wide, heavy (does the word 'huge' have meaning for you?) delivery vans and big SUV's and trucks.  What small firm in general retail needs a big monster vehicle that eats fuel, tires, and space in the parking lot or the warehouse, and needs big parking spots on the street for urban deliveries? 

Manufacturers who should wake up and smell this 'cup of coffee' include (of course) Ford, but also VW, Opel, Citroen and Peugeot, FIAT and probably others I have forgotten.  All are sitting on products that would sell if available here.  Ford, GM and VW could each have had a model here years ago, if they just made their line to also meet US Standards (some are already made to equal or higher standards) and sent a few over for "Los Federales" to destroy/crash as requisite samples!!

(No wonder our automakers go broke ... so blind to an opportunity they couldn't find if it was their own 'south end, on a north-bound road', even given a guide, a roadmap, and a seeing eye dog!)  Arf-arf!!