Already Ford has announced its plans to bring the global Fiesta small hatch to the U.S., and the Focus is now also slated to join its littler sibling. Alongside those two, due in 2010 and 2011 respectively, will come the Kuga and C-Max, Ford's global crossover SUV and MPV - the third and fourth of Ford's global cars to come stateside.

It turns out our speculation from a year ago turned out to be right on the money, and both of the European global cars will be headed to America in the near future. Aside from the Fiesta, all of the new global cars arriving in the United States will be based on the same platform, the C1. The current U.S. Focus uses an older generation of the platform, but all three models - Focus, Kuga and C-Max - share the new underpinnings in Europe.

The new crop of global cars will be built in the U.S. despite their European origins. The Fiesta will be the first to show, with a confirmed sale date of 2010, reports Automotive News. The Focus still hasn't gotten a firm date, but it is coming, and insiders expect 2011 to be the year, although late 2010 is also a possibility.

The Kuga and C-Max have not had firm date commitments either, but it will probably be at least 2011 and possibly 2012 before they are both on sale in the U.S. There's likely to be a Kuga Hybrid (or Escape Hybrid) version too.

Ford also announced that it would be synchronizing the product development cycles between the U.S., Europe and the Asia-Pacific region now that it is moving to global platforms. The move is intended to keep supply chains and economies of scale advantages that would disappear if models weren't receiving updates at the same time across the global market.

Ford Kuga