Mazda by 2006 will market a premium crossover SUV in North America based on the Mazda6 sedan, the Nihon Keizei newspaper reported. That report backed up less specific comments made by Mazda North American chief Jim O'Sullivan at this month's Chicago Auto Show. "There is no question that crossovers is where the market is going and we need a vehicle other than the Tribute there," said O'Sullivan. Ford and Lincoln have already announced plans to launch crossovers off the Mazda6 platform, which is also the basis for the Ford Futura sedan and a "Baby Lincoln" due in 2006. O'Sullivan said, "But we need to establish differentiation in our products...we don't want to get into a badge engineering situation." Speculation is that Mazda would look to sell around 50,000 units of the new crossover. Ford product development boss Phil Martens said in a recent interview, "The Ford Escape and Mazda Tribute ended up being entirely too similar, and we have to avoid that with Mazda in the future," said Martens, who worked at Mazda when the two SUVs were being developed. -Jim Burt

Good, it's about time someone is paying attention to this market segment.

ahh yes, the SUV market has been completely ignored up to this point ;)

LOL

Those hybrid SUV's are gonna get some serious attention. I went to the Chicago Autoshow and one wild concept Toyota had was a hybrid V8, though no information was available. I asked the reps if anything might have been on paper, MPG, HP, nothing, but it was a cool concept idea.

zoom zoom zoom...

LMAO! Yeah, I could see em doing that song in a V8 hybrid commercial. :D