Ford Motor Co. has added a hatchback version of the Fiesta to the 2010 North American launch of the small economy car. The hatchback will be sold alongside the sedan.

Ford has confirmed that it will build the hatchback and sedan at its Cuautitlan, Mexico, plant starting in early 2010 as part of a $3 billion investment in the country.

The Fiesta will give Ford a fuel-efficient competitor against such cars as the Honda Fit and Nissan Versa.

It's not clear whether the hatchback Fiesta will be a three-door, a five-door or come in both configurations.

Ford said the Cuautitlan plant will shift from making F-series pickups for Mexico to making small cars for all of North America. The changes at the plant near Mexico City begin this year.

Mercedes to use Chrysler studio

Mercedes-Benz has confirmed that it will move its U.S. design studio to the former Chrysler Pacifica Advance Design Center in Carlsbad, Calif., beginning this month.

The Chrysler studio, which closed this year, is almost three times larger than Mercedes' studio in Irvine, Calif. The 35,000-square-foot Carlsbad studio will allow Mercedes designers to build full-scale vehicle models, something that was impossible in the Irvine studio.

Mercedes' other design studios are in Sindelfingen, Germany; Como, Italy; and Tokyo. A Mercedes spokesman said it is unclear what will happen to the Irvine studio, which opened in 1990.

Toyota Highlander gets makeover

The Highlander, Toyota's first midsize crossover utility vehicle, moved into its second generation for 2008 with a complete makeover.

Based on the Lexus RX crossover, which arrived two years before the Highlander's debut for 2001, this was the second Toyota-brand SUV to break from the truck mold, offering consumers a more refined family hauler based on the chassis of a car —- in this case, the Toyota Camry.

The first was the compact RAV4 that came to market in 1996, the first of the vehicles that were called mini-SUVs.