Unfortunately sedans and hatches are just about completely out for the domestic automakers- they sold poorly and were discontinued. The reasons behind poor sales are surely multi-faceted, but, for Ford in particular, they didn't help matters with quality issues like the "Powershift" dual-clutch automatic, which was flawed from the beginning and left a lot of Focus and Fiesta owners (both now discontinued in the US) with a bad taste in their mouth.
domestic sedans and hatches sold poorly and were discontinued.
Quality might have some small piece there, but there's other factors like:
- large trucks & SUVs are more profitable
- there's import restrictions on that category so it has a certain insulation from foreign competition
- US car companies are really just banks that happen to make cars -- "cash is king" was for our dads, now if you want a deal it's "take our corporate 20-year financing on an asset that will be fully depreciated in 8"
The root cause is CAFE regulations and the penalty for small-footprint vehicles. You get more profit if you don't have to make higher efficiency cars rather than cheaper trucks. You get more profit if you make larger trucks rather than smaller. The optimal solution is to make cars undesirable with poor quality or stop building them altogether by pretending they're trucks (PT Cruiser, all XUVs) and make smaller trucks unavailable.
Nobody is buying new electric SUVs and saying the words "it was in my affordable range" They buy it used when its half-priced or lower, around $25k, or lease it.
