All hail the death of the American $h!box. With the 2011 Cruze and 2012 Focus, Chevrolet and Ford have finally delivered compact cars that aren't cheap turds with rental-car interiors.

Certainly Chevy and Ford are tired of losing sales to the more refined Japanese competitors and those sneaky imports from South Korea who trump all comers with an unparalleled feature-per-dollar ratio and worry-free warranties. Today, buyers want their 40 mpg as well as a driving experience and level of quality previously reserved for cars a class or two higher. Well, duh.

So the globally designed and engineered Chevy Cruze and Ford Focus are not just the same old heaps in new wrappers. No $h!boxes here. But there can only be one winner.

http://www.insideline.com/ford/focus/2012/comparison-test-2011-chevrolet-cruze-ltz-vs-2012-ford-focus-titanium.html

It's obvious that they would give the win to the Focus but I'm going to play devil's advocate on a few points...

-MyFordTouch has been universally panned as overly complicated by numerous sources... Certainly moreso than the Cruze's NAV system

-In my humble opinion the Cruze has a MUCH more classy and refined looking interior than the Focus. I think it's ugly... In the case of the blurple color scheme, possibly deal-breaker ugly; every other review says (contrary to IL) that the Cruze in fact has the better quality plastics. While we're on the subject the Malibu interior is also classier than the Fusion.

-The 2.0L engine has more horsepower (160) but continues the stupid sorry trend of having torque numbers LOWER than the HP number rather than higher. From my experience I've found that the ideal combination for good around town guts is to have the torque higher than the horsepower. IL stated that the bottom end was weak on the Focus.

Sync sounds great on paper.... it's less functional in real life. It has a hard time understanding me... and those of you who've met me know I speac vewy cweeerly.

Having now spent time in a Cruze have a better idea on the car. It was a lot nicer than I expected. The head room in this car is amazing.

The leg room in the back is limited at best if you have the seats back.

The interior is a major win in this class I have never seen the this quality or quiet in cars this size or price.

The thing that caught me off guard was the sister Buick. It look much better in person than I expected. I could not get in it to really check it out. If it that much better than the Cruze it should do well if priced right. Ford would not be able to compete with it.