Ford Vehicle

“We’re assessing that right now,” Alan Mulally told a Detroit radio station, adding that many people share the opinion that Ford should sell the Ka — about the size of the Smart fortwo — on this side of the Atlantic. A new version of the Ka was unveiled last week at the Paris Motor Show. It will be introduced in major European markets by late this year or early next year. The Ka is far smaller than the Focus, currently Ford’s only U.S. compact car.

Focus sales are up 24 percent through September, even though the U.S. auto market is down nearly 13 percent for the year. Mulally said on WJR-AM’s “Paul W. Smith Show” that Ford decided to give the Ka another look due to high fuel prices pushing up demand for small cars and the response to introduction of the Fiesta subcompact.

Ford had said it wouldn’t bring the Ka, sold mostly in Europe, to the United States because the markets are different, with European cities having more congestion and narrower roads. Ford plans to start selling the Fiesta global subcompact and the European version of the Focus in the United States in 2010, boosting its array of small cars as the domestic market continues to shift away from trucks and sport utility vehicles.

A diesel version of the Ka gets 42 miles per gallon in combined city-highway driving under U.S. testing standards, Ford spokesman Said Deep said, not much more than a gasoline-powered Fiesta will get. A vehicle built on the same underpinnings as the Focus is scheduled to start production at Ford’s Louisville Assembly Plant by 2011. The automaker’s Kentucky Truck Plant, in eastern Jefferson County, is in the process of adding production of large SUVs to its lineup of Super Duty trucks. U.S.