2013 Ford Fusion: Passion seizes the family sedan

[davidlane]

Out of all Ford’s trout-mouthed wonder cars, the expectations are highest for the Fusion, the company’s freshly redesigned C/D sedan, a segment that in the U.S. represents more than one million annual sales (Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata, Volkswagen Passat, etc.). Careers break upon such rocks. Engineers jump off buildings.
Auto makers devote themselves to a family sedan redesign with special zeal because getting it wrong means losing a generation of buyers, as well Ford F -1.37% knows. Dearborn has raised the stakes for itself further because the Fusion—built on the CD4 global platform—represents the current best practices of the “One Ford” strategy, an effort to contain costs by building essentially the same vehicle for all global markets. According to Ford, the Fusion has 80% global parts commonality (Europhiles may prefer to think of it as buying four-fifths of a Mondeo. A miscue on the Fusion would reverberate through the product line for years to come.
Good thing it’s so awesome.

Continue at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/201...dan-2013-01-26

[2b2]

Thanks for posting this, davidlane
I like:

...the Fusion’s cockpit design finally brings some order, some architectural sobriety to what is becoming an increasingly cluttered and randomized space. The segment’s worst offender is the Honda Accord, whose cockpit presents the driver with disconnected islands of audio, climate and navigation information accessed through a rotary-quadrant controller, steering-wheel switches and (redundantly) a touch screen, with some twist knobs thrown in for good measure. It’s a madhouse...
...compared with its rivals, the Fusion is a marvel of human-factors engineering...
...There can be no greater tribute to some rank-and-file, made-by-the-million family car: I want to drive it again.