Ford's Mercury brand will gain a new member of its line-up, built on the same platform as the Ford Focus. The new Mercury will debut in 2011 and may be called the Tracer.

Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, quoted in an article for Automotive News by Jamie Lareau, said, "Here in the United States, the trend toward fuel-efficient vehicles is very important, and the trend toward small cars is coming back."

"Our strategy is pretty simple," he added. "Have a broad-based lineup." Ford is the only major American automaker to survive the recession and industry crash without government assistance and is making good strides toward profitability.

The company posted a full-year profit for 2009, it's first such year in the black since 2005, and offered up a fourth-quarter profit of $868 million over its 2008 4Q loss of $6 billion. The company is counting on smaller cars to help it better those numbers in coming months.

Another diminutive Ford, the Fiesta, will become available this summer, and dealers are hopeful the higher trim levels of the model will prove popular, further boosting their profit margins.

Trucks, which were once the major money makers for Ford, have been put on the back burner, but the company will bring out a re-designed Super Duty mid-year with a 6.7-liter diesel engine in a bid to preserve power with a "greener" footprint.