American auto companies have long talked globally but acted locally.
Though they have operations in every corner of the globe, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company have practiced a certain nationalism within the United States borders, building and selling cars here that would look out of place on European or Asian roads. At the same time, cars built and sold overseas generally never made it to these shores.
But that is changing. At the Chicago Auto Show this week, G.M. showed off two new Saturn models, the Astra compact and the next generation of its Saturn Vue, a crossover vehicle, based on vehicles sold under the Opel brand in Europe.
It also displayed a concept vehicle, the Pontiac G8, a powerful sedan whose underpinnings come from the Holden Commodore, a big car sold by G.M.’s Australian division.
Ford may pluck up to three models from its European lineup: a crossover vehicle called the S-Max, the Transit van and the Mondeo sedan. The first of them could reach American dealers in less than three years, news reports and industry analysts said this week.
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