GM, after all, is a ready customer for those midsize cars it will be designing.
In 2009, GM recalled about 8, 000 Pontiac G6 midsize cars from the 2005 model year for the same problem.
And they provide a more unique option for shoppers bored with ubiquitous midsize cars like the Audi A4 or BMW 3-Series.
So that's why the company will build up to 800, 000 midsize cars and car-based crossovers off of one common chassis, saving billions in engineering costs.
But GM, Ford and Chrysler lag in this area, and that's why many of their midsize cars are sold with six-cylinder motors rather than with fours.
In many other segments, including major categories like midsize cars, fullsize pickups, small crossovers and small sedans, performance is secondary, if on the radar screen at all.
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Perhaps more important, a recession damped demand for midsize cars.
Because the Mercedes-Benz S400 illustrates how mainstream large and midsize cars in the coming years will be able to maintain acceptable levels of performance while garnering improved fuel economy to meet stricter federal standards.
The hottest-selling segments in the auto business should continue to be fuel-efficient small and midsize cars and crossover SUVs (including compact models), which combined account for around two-thirds of all new-vehicle sales according to Autodata.com.
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Sales of the midsize luxury cars, which are offered in conventional and gas-electric hybrid versions, have nearly doubled so far this year compared with 2012.
Opel does the basic engineering work globally for GM's compact cars and midsize family sedans.
Fuel economy ratings at or above 40 mpg on the highway is becoming common among small cars, with midsize models leveraging turbocharged four-cylinder engines to deliver V6-like acceleration with fairly frugal fuel economy.
It will give users of midsize, economy, and luxury GM cars and trucks voice access to e-mail, plus information retrieval from the Web.
Compact and subcompact cars are on pace to outsell midsize entries for the first time in nearly two decades according to sales projections from J.
Other cars arriving this fall: a redesigned midsize Chrysler Sebring and two new compact Jeep models, the Compass and Patriot.
This is the first vehicle built with the so-called MQB, which stands for Modularer Querbaukasten, or "modular transverse toolbox, " for small to midsize, front-drive, transverse-engine cars.
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As an example, sales of the midsize Chrysler 200, which was regarded as one of the most forgettable cars on the road when it was named the Sebring, were up by a whopping 220 percent this March over the same period in 2011, and increased by 121 percent year-to-date.
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