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Dodge has chosen an unlikely venue — the 2006 Geneva Motor Show — to debut a new small car that it hopes will be a potent weapon in its battle against the torrent of subcompacts flooding North America from Japan and Korea.

What's more unusual about the Dodge Hornet concept isn't necessarily the fact that parent DaimlerChrysler may team with fellow German auto giant Volkswagen on the car's development, but that the production version, tentatively due in model-year 2009, is expected to be assembled in Mexico — hardly Detroit or Stuttgart's backyard.

Motown rival Ford Motor Company, likewise, is working on its own small Scion-fighter — in fact, a brace of them — also to be built in Mexico, with some engineering sourced from Ford of Europe and from Mazda in Japan. One of the new B-segment models reportedly will be called "Bronco," with retro styling cues derived both from the original 1966 Bronco and the 2004 concept vehicle of the same name. The Ford twins are due to reach U.S. showrooms in late 2008, as 2009 models.

Making Dodges in Mexico
The Chrysler Group has been shopping for more than a year for an affordable small car and a low-cost production source, and reportedly scouted locations and potential partners in China, Korea and Brazil, among others.

Enter VW, which last month signed off on a deal to buy minivans from Chrysler in 2008. As a quid pro quo, according to European sources familiar with the discussions, Wolfsburg is expected to provide Auburn Hills with a version of its Polo small-car platform on which to base a new Dodge subcompact for North America and Europe.

The Dodge Hornet concept, which will be unveiled in Switzerland on February 28, is said to provide an accurate glimpse of the new VW-based Dodge small car. It is a roomy five-door hatchback with compact exterior dimensions, powered by a twincam, 1.6-liter, four-cylinder engine.

Rather than being a smaller clone of the new Dodge Caliber compact, however, the Hornet appears to set the Dodge brand on a fresh styling course that draws more inspiration from recent Japanese small-car designs than from Europe or North America.

Supplier sources say the current plan is for VW to build the small Dodge at its Beetle/Jetta plant in Puebla, Mexico, beginning in late 2008 or early 2009.

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The Dodge brand wants to expand globally and needs an entry-level vehicle that is less expensive than the recently introduced 2007 Caliber hatchback. U.S. dealers want a car priced below the Caliber, too.

The result is the Hornet, a five-door concept with unusual proportions: It is 8.3 inches longer than a Mini Cooper hatchback and 2.0 inches wider than a Chrysler 300 sedan. It will debut Feb. 28 at the Geneva show.

Wheeler said the automaker "really got serious about two years ago" in determining what would be the right model for an international market.

"We met with Chrysler's managing directors in other countries. We got information as far as ideally what vehicles they would like to look at," said Wheeler. The Hornet is the result of those meetings, a relatively short vehicle with wide proportions.