Ford has announced that its seven-passenger compact minivan called the C-Max will come to America in late 2011. The C-Max will be based on Ford’s next-generation small car chassis, and will be related to the new Ford Focus, which will be sold in America next year.

The C-Max will be similar to the compact Mazda 5, but will have two additional seats. The Ford C-Max will have two sliding rear doors, and the second and third row seats will fold flat to create a utilitarian cargo floor.

The C-Max is currently sold in Europe, where small cars are more popular than in the U.S. In the press release announcing the C-Max’s entrance into the American market, Ford says that the small car segment of the U.S. market has grown from 15% to 22% of total new car sales since 2004. Ford expects that trend to continue, and thinks that Americans will be interested in a compact minivan.

A compact minivan is nothing new. The original Dodge Caravan was much smaller than the vans on sale today, and even came with a four-cylinder engine. Ford is trying to revive the minivan with it’s C-Max, which should get much better gas mileage then the behemoth family haulers that are on the roads today. A 2009 Mazda 5, which is related to the current generation European C-Max, gets 22 city mpg and 28 on the highway. Most minivans are around 16 city and 23 highway.

Picture via Ford.