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Over the years, most Americans have considered small cars penalty boxes they were forced to drive because they couldn’t drive anything bigger or better. The Big Three concurred with their small cars designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator driver, at the lowest cost and at the lowest price. No wonder the Pinto/Bobcat, Vega, Omni/Horizon, Escort/Lynx, Cavalier/Sunbird, Cobalt/G5 never resonated. They sold in relatively large numbers because they had to to help their manufacturers meet CAFE requirements, but rarely did a buyer purchase one out of desire or lust. The Japanese partially solved the small car equation offering Civic, Corolla, Mazda3, Lancer, Impreza and more recently the Kizashi. All were desirable small cars with great quality offered at affordable prices. With their latest offerings, the Koreans are fully engaged with the new Kia Forte and Hyundai Elantra. So, the small car – C-Class – segment is now ready for more real competition this time from Chevrolet, Hyundai and Ford.

Over the past couple of months, I have driven three new high volume C-Class cars that redefine the small car category in the United States if not the world. The Chevrolet Cruze, Hyundai Elantra and Ford Focus will each be a big seller and each has its positive attributes. They are within inches of each other in size and take each takes the word “cheap” out of the definition of a small car. The missing entrant in this bunch is the upcoming Honda Civic that will evolve for the 2012 model year, but while we’ve seen the car, the official specs and fuel economy data have not yet been released.

Lets briefly look at each of them in turn.

2011 Chevrolet Cruze: Cruze is the first of these three new small cars having been on sale in September 2010. Looking like a big baby Malibu (which is a good thing), the Cruze offers up the most conventional styling of the three. It has a generous package, is easy to get into and out of and has great visibility. The base Cruze LS is powered by a 1.8L 4-cylinder with 138-horsepower. The higher Cruze models are powered by a 1.4L turbocharged 4-cylinder also with 138-horsepower. The Cruze with its ECO package wins the highway fuel economy ratings contest with 42mpg with its turbocharged 1.4L 4-cylinder mated to a manual transmission. An automatic ECO drops the highway fuel economy by 5-mpg. The base ECO is priced $1,900 higher than the base Cruze that starts at $16,275. The top of the line Cruze LTZ is priced at 21,975 but checking all the boxes on the order form can get the LTZ up to $26,680. That includes the RS package, a moonroof and 7-inch navigation system with Pioneer audio.

Cruze is produced at General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant resurrected from a history going back to 1966. One of GM’s largest plants, Lordstown produced almost 2,000,000 Chevrolet Vega (Pinto competitor) and 1.4 million Chevrolet Cobalts among others ranging from Caprice to Camaro to the Chevrolet Monza.

I figure I am ratcheting up my critical comparisons because these are small cars and we’ve come to expect little from them, but Cruze offers easy to live with package, ride, handling and NVH in an affordable package. Also, Cruze has GM’s operator assisted turn-by-turn OnStar system that works quickly and flawlessly.

2011 Hyundai Elantra: Launched in late December 2010, Elantra takes a very different direction from the Cruze. It has swoopy, eye-catching styling – Hyundai calls this “Fluidic Sculpture” – reminiscent of the award-winning Hyundai Sonata and opts to be big, big, big relative to its classmates. Rated as a Mid-Size Car, Elantra is spacious on the inside without taking up too much road space on the outside. Elantra’s claim to fame may be that all Elantra models achieve 40MPG on the highway without having to resort to an extra-cost high fuel efficiency model. Remember, Cruze charges $1,900 for their ECO model and Ford is planning on charging more for a 40MPG model of the Focus we will discuss next.

The new Elantra is now built at Hyundai’s Montgomery, Alabama assembly plant. The Montgomery plant previously assembled Sonata mid-size cars and Santa Fe crossover SUVs. With the launch of Kia’s brand spanking new West Point, Georgia plant making the Kia Sorento XSUV, Hyundai moved the Santa Fe to 84-miles eastward to West Point and begin producing Elantras at Montgomery which had been expanded from 300,000 units capacity to 400,000. One problem with that. Sonata is such a hot seller and Elantra promises to be, that they have already outstripped the plant’s capacity planning volume and are now going to import Elantras from Korea. Watch this space for Hyundai’s announcement of a 3rd American assembly plant.

2012 Ford Focus Ford finally gets it act together on the Focus. Holding great promise when it was first launched in the USA for the 2000 model year, Focus never lived up to its potential and suffered from lack of interest, cost reductions and shoddy quality. A major change to its appearance for 2006 did little to increase its appeal. All of that changes with the 2012 model year. To be introduced in early Spring, 2011, the 3rd generation Focus is Ford’s best attempt yet at a true global small car. With 80% of its parts common with the European version, Focus comes to the USA with all of the European goodness pretty much intact.

In the USA, Focus gets two bodystyles – a three-box 4-door sedan with a trunk and a two-box 5-door hatchback. Normally hatchbacks sell poorly in the USA but Ford expects the Focus hatch to be about 40% to 50% of Focus volume in its first year. Ford admits they have been surprised at the strong popularity of the Fiesta hatchback – it has been as much as 60% of sales for the Fiesta during its first year.

We can’t finish a discussion about the Focus without noting its level of technology. Focus gets MyFordTouch that transforms the driver to vehicle interface through a clever combination of steering wheel, nav screen and voice controls. You may have read that Consumer Reports finds this new Ford system distracting, but it only takes a few minutes to learn the basics and begin navigating through its capabilities.

The car looks great – maybe not as overstyled as the Elantra but certainly not as mainstream as Cruze – Focus will turn heads with its kinetic design language. Because the car is so “styled” I worried that the interior would not be very liveable, but it is spacious, ergonomically easy to grasp and very comfortable.

The key to the Focus, however, is its driving dynamics. Powered by a 2.0L 160-horsepower 4-cylinder, the Focus has twenty to thirty more ponies than its competition. This really shows up in driving the Focus. It is set up like a European C-Class car with excellent road manners under most situations. On tight, winding roads, the Focus is very flingable holding to any line you point it to.

Ford has converted its Michigan Truck Plant – most recently building Expeditions and Navigators – to assemble C-Class products. The highest volume C-Class vehicle is, of course, the Focus. Later, Ford will add a 5-passenger people mover – the C-Max to the plant as well.

The Envelope Please! These are three very good small cars – maybe not really so small – but full of goodness and attributes that Americans covet in their vehicles. After getting out of each of them, you think “now that’s a great car – a surprise”. You can, of course, nit pick each one of them, but the criticisms would be minor and picayune. Which would I select? I would select the Ford Focus 5-door hatch. It’s good looking, great to drive with enough power for about any situation – it wins the horsepower war among these three and that power strongly contributes to its driving dynamics. Its ride and handling is very European and that is a good thing. Quiet, good ergonomics all play into its acceptance. I’d put the Elantra second of these three. It edges out the Cruze with its swoopy Fluidic Design styling, large interior and 10 more horsepower.

In reality, though, a buyer couldn’t go wrong with any of these fine new C-Class entries.