Moving on to the multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) niche, Ford has marked its own space with the Fiesta-derived Fusion (72) which, perhaps for the sake of gaining its own acronym, it describes as an urban activity vehicle (UAV).
It has the potential to score highly next year, though perhaps at a cannibalistic expense to its Fiesta base. The real growth in recent years has been in the "compact MPV" area, led by the groundbreaking Renault Scenic and followed by the Opel Zafira (1,831). Both continue to share more or less equally the substantial bulk of the niche's sales, with the rest made up by contributions from Citroën's Picasso, Mitsubishi's Space Star (293), Fiat's Multipla (213), Hyundai's Matrix (208), Daewoo's Tacuma (126) and Honda's H-RV (107).
Anybody after that is in the small figures, and likely to stay that way when the next versions of the Renault Scenic come through in mid-2003 to re-establish its place as the full front-runner.
In the full-size MPV group, worth altogether 5.4 per cent of the market, Hyundai has again achieved another number one, with its Trajet (1,047)driving really far ahead of Ford's Galaxy (504) and its SEAT Alhambra (304) and VW Sharan (83) siblings all combined.
Down the line, and larger, the Chrysler Voyager (122) slightly increased its unit sales, and the European original of the species, Renault's Espace (73), dropped a little in anticipation of the new version upcoming. The futuristic Toyota Previa (56) held its minority place, but Mazda's MPV (they use the generic as their name) flopped badly.
- Brian Byrne