Feature
The Smart Fortwo "Street Smart" Road Show
The Sub-Tiny Euro-Chic Smart Fortwo Hits the American Highway. Bugs and Big Trucks, Look Out.
A wide girl wearing a baseball cap and a sundress, with the Big Dipper tattooed across her pink back has been waiting in line for more than an hour. Finally her turn, she opens the driver-side door and plops into the Smart Fortwo.
She, and maybe 200 more potential buyers like her, have gathered at a swanky Whole Foods supermarket in Glendale, California, where they've been getting patiently sunbaked while waiting to drive this hot-rod golf cart of tomorrow around the block.
Almost a year before the tiny Smart Fortwo will be sold in the United States, the company has embarked on a nationwide tour of the marketplace, in which Fortwos are trucked across the country to meet and greet potential buyers. As 50-state, 50-plus-city lean, green consumer cattle calls go, the "Street Smart" road show is pretty impressive.
The Little Big Picture
Meet the future of small: the Smart Fortwo. At 8.8 feet long, but 5.1 feet tall and wide, it's half the size of a Camry or Buick sedan — three can fit in a conventional parking space — and a radical rethinking of traffic's main ingredient: the car. At 1,700 pounds, it weighs a little more than a Lotus Elise.
When it goes on sale next spring (Smart plans about 70 dealerships in the U.S.), the Fortwo will come in three models: the Pure and Passion, plus the Cabriolet, which is sort of a Cabriolet-ette. Having already sold 770,000 worldwide — with a few gray-marketed into the United States — the Smart Fortwo has everything you'd expect in a normal coupe except a front and a back.
If you are old enough to recall when Volkswagens were not only a car but a cult, the Smart may take you back. Fortwo folk are mass-marketing circa '64 VW individuality. The literature assures you that, with a Fortwo purchase, you will be securing your singular identity as a recycling, energy-saving, clean-thinking saver of the earth. The Fortwo pitch approaches the religious, a gospel less about motors than morality, going from the eco-friendly to the eco-promiscuous, its sales scripture singing the praises of recycling everything up to and including garbage cans.
Trouble is, the Fortwo doesn't get as good freeway gas mileage as a Honda Civic hybrid (40 mpg vs. 50 mpg), although the president of Smart U.S.A, Dave Schembri, offers a corrective assessment: "The Fortwo gets 40 miles per gallon if driven like a maniac, over 50 if babied."
The Executioner's Song
The idea for a car "just big enough for two people and a case of beer" goes back to the 1940s Citroën 2CV. The Smart "concept" dates to 1972 and the Smart company was formed in 1994. Under the leadership of "Swatch Watch boss" Nicolas Hayek (the 273rd-richest person in the world), the first Smarts were sold in Europe in 1997. A problem, however. While novel to drive, Smarts were tippy and rolled by Smart test-drivers during "extreme driving tests."
Not a sales plus, and the "tour flyer" reminds us that we are surrounded by airbags, in the hands of ESP (an electronic stability program), ABS (antilock brakes), CBC (corner brake control) and BAS (brake assistance program). The Fortwo has less a chassis than a skeleton, a structural framework that completely surrounds the driver and passenger. Online crash test videos show what looks like a long railroad-tracked "hall of doom," down which the Fortwo is catapulted. Cut to the Fortwo slamming into a wall.
To further drive the safety message, Smart hocks its wares. A displayed Fortwo has been carefully sawed partially apart to reveal its components and subsystems, and the cutaway Fortwo provides those waiting in line with partial X-ray vision. Airbags are deployed like little cotton clouds.
Sales Details
Radio beamed from a satellite serenades the line. Bob Marley sings from outer space, "Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights." A black demo Fortwo sits beside those waiting to take test-drives.
Once behind the wheel, the Fortwo is magically uncramped. I am surrounded, but not especially confined, by a "tridion safety cell" (reinforced steel cage). A slender, well-dressed woman slides in beside me and looks around in smiling wonder. "Roomy. You're tall, and your head isn't hitting anything, is it?"
Nope. A lot of inner space for a car that ends 2 feet in front of your face and 2 feet behind the nape of your neck.
Fortwo literature explains, "Rear storage compartment allows for easy transport of groceries, suitcases, gym bag and other necessities." Wait a sec. Could we go back to that "s" on the end of "suitcases"? Whose suitcases might these be — Barbie's? Yes, you could get a gym bag back there, and a couple bags of groceries — but an "s" on the end of "suitcase" in a Smart? Seems a reach. Still, on the Fortwo Web site there is a picture of a Fortwo with five suitcases stacked side by side in the "trunk."
More perks: You can park a Fortwo perpendicular to a curb, and swap out body panels to completely change the color of the car in the time it takes to eat lunch. The Fortwo cabriolet allows you to "drop the top" at 70 mph. The three models escalate from the utilitarian Pure (featuring Scodic Grey seats) to the sportif Passion. That semi-Soviet "Pure" can be had for $12,000. But there are lots of options.
There's even a $26,000 "Bad Boy" Brabus "Nightrun" Fortwo. Only 50 will be made, each reflecting "the pinnacle of personality and panache." Although it won't come to the U.S., worse luck.
Behind the Wheel
Après your hour wait in line, slip inside the car representing the only production vehicle on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Swing the seatbelt across your chest and click it in place. Start the Smart and — my, what's this? A 140-kph speedometer fronting for a 71-horsepower 799cc three-cylinder motor. Curious, given you can buy chainsaws with more oomph than that.
Now step on the gas. Caramba! Inertia. Those 71 horses? Old school put-put. The Whole Foods scoots away behind, but the matronly zero to 30 in 6.5 seconds doesn't thrill.
The transmission — "a manual, but with an automatic clutch" — provides a gritty mechanical ride that would be more fun with more power. Given that the 1.0-liter engine — the displacement of a carafe of wine — is less a conventional engine than a propulsive gizmo, the Smart acquits itself, well, so-so. Imagine driving a chunk of Jetta underwater. Slo-mo zoom, stable but loggy handling, the steering small-car responsive but scarcely go-cart exact. Frankly, as a longtime jalopy Porsche 356 driver, I'd feel better if the Fortwo felt a little more dangerous.
The view is good, though. Driver and passenger slightly "staggered" in their seating positions for greater visibility and, with no hood, you could be driving down the street seated in an old-fashioned phone booth.
Who's the Idiot?
According to Schembri, the market for the Fortwo is the "creative class" of "first adopters," consumers who "make a statement of who they are by the products they buy," and are "not defined by age or income, but by attitude and lifestyle."
Like the goateed guy in the Stupidiot.com T-shirt. He's about 20 years old and has been waiting an hour to drive the red Cabriolet. It's finally his turn.
"Would you buy one right now if you had a chance?" we ask as he buckles in.
He smiles at me as if I'm a stupidiot. "Of course."
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.
She, and maybe 200 more potential buyers like her, have gathered at a swanky Whole Foods supermarket in Glendale, California, where they've been getting patiently sunbaked while waiting to drive this hot-rod golf cart of tomorrow around the block.
Almost a year before the tiny Smart Fortwo will be sold in the United States, the company has embarked on a nationwide tour of the marketplace, in which Fortwos are trucked across the country to meet and greet potential buyers. As 50-state, 50-plus-city lean, green consumer cattle calls go, the "Street Smart" road show is pretty impressive.
The Little Big Picture
Meet the future of small: the Smart Fortwo. At 8.8 feet long, but 5.1 feet tall and wide, it's half the size of a Camry or Buick sedan — three can fit in a conventional parking space — and a radical rethinking of traffic's main ingredient: the car. At 1,700 pounds, it weighs a little more than a Lotus Elise.
When it goes on sale next spring (Smart plans about 70 dealerships in the U.S.), the Fortwo will come in three models: the Pure and Passion, plus the Cabriolet, which is sort of a Cabriolet-ette. Having already sold 770,000 worldwide — with a few gray-marketed into the United States — the Smart Fortwo has everything you'd expect in a normal coupe except a front and a back.
If you are old enough to recall when Volkswagens were not only a car but a cult, the Smart may take you back. Fortwo folk are mass-marketing circa '64 VW individuality. The literature assures you that, with a Fortwo purchase, you will be securing your singular identity as a recycling, energy-saving, clean-thinking saver of the earth. The Fortwo pitch approaches the religious, a gospel less about motors than morality, going from the eco-friendly to the eco-promiscuous, its sales scripture singing the praises of recycling everything up to and including garbage cans.
Trouble is, the Fortwo doesn't get as good freeway gas mileage as a Honda Civic hybrid (40 mpg vs. 50 mpg), although the president of Smart U.S.A, Dave Schembri, offers a corrective assessment: "The Fortwo gets 40 miles per gallon if driven like a maniac, over 50 if babied."
The Executioner's Song
The idea for a car "just big enough for two people and a case of beer" goes back to the 1940s Citroën 2CV. The Smart "concept" dates to 1972 and the Smart company was formed in 1994. Under the leadership of "Swatch Watch boss" Nicolas Hayek (the 273rd-richest person in the world), the first Smarts were sold in Europe in 1997. A problem, however. While novel to drive, Smarts were tippy and rolled by Smart test-drivers during "extreme driving tests."
Not a sales plus, and the "tour flyer" reminds us that we are surrounded by airbags, in the hands of ESP (an electronic stability program), ABS (antilock brakes), CBC (corner brake control) and BAS (brake assistance program). The Fortwo has less a chassis than a skeleton, a structural framework that completely surrounds the driver and passenger. Online crash test videos show what looks like a long railroad-tracked "hall of doom," down which the Fortwo is catapulted. Cut to the Fortwo slamming into a wall.
To further drive the safety message, Smart hocks its wares. A displayed Fortwo has been carefully sawed partially apart to reveal its components and subsystems, and the cutaway Fortwo provides those waiting in line with partial X-ray vision. Airbags are deployed like little cotton clouds.
Sales Details
Radio beamed from a satellite serenades the line. Bob Marley sings from outer space, "Get up! Stand up! Stand up for your rights." A black demo Fortwo sits beside those waiting to take test-drives.
Once behind the wheel, the Fortwo is magically uncramped. I am surrounded, but not especially confined, by a "tridion safety cell" (reinforced steel cage). A slender, well-dressed woman slides in beside me and looks around in smiling wonder. "Roomy. You're tall, and your head isn't hitting anything, is it?"
Nope. A lot of inner space for a car that ends 2 feet in front of your face and 2 feet behind the nape of your neck.
Fortwo literature explains, "Rear storage compartment allows for easy transport of groceries, suitcases, gym bag and other necessities." Wait a sec. Could we go back to that "s" on the end of "suitcases"? Whose suitcases might these be — Barbie's? Yes, you could get a gym bag back there, and a couple bags of groceries — but an "s" on the end of "suitcase" in a Smart? Seems a reach. Still, on the Fortwo Web site there is a picture of a Fortwo with five suitcases stacked side by side in the "trunk."
More perks: You can park a Fortwo perpendicular to a curb, and swap out body panels to completely change the color of the car in the time it takes to eat lunch. The Fortwo cabriolet allows you to "drop the top" at 70 mph. The three models escalate from the utilitarian Pure (featuring Scodic Grey seats) to the sportif Passion. That semi-Soviet "Pure" can be had for $12,000. But there are lots of options.
There's even a $26,000 "Bad Boy" Brabus "Nightrun" Fortwo. Only 50 will be made, each reflecting "the pinnacle of personality and panache." Although it won't come to the U.S., worse luck.
Behind the Wheel
Après your hour wait in line, slip inside the car representing the only production vehicle on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Swing the seatbelt across your chest and click it in place. Start the Smart and — my, what's this? A 140-kph speedometer fronting for a 71-horsepower 799cc three-cylinder motor. Curious, given you can buy chainsaws with more oomph than that.
Now step on the gas. Caramba! Inertia. Those 71 horses? Old school put-put. The Whole Foods scoots away behind, but the matronly zero to 30 in 6.5 seconds doesn't thrill.
The transmission — "a manual, but with an automatic clutch" — provides a gritty mechanical ride that would be more fun with more power. Given that the 1.0-liter engine — the displacement of a carafe of wine — is less a conventional engine than a propulsive gizmo, the Smart acquits itself, well, so-so. Imagine driving a chunk of Jetta underwater. Slo-mo zoom, stable but loggy handling, the steering small-car responsive but scarcely go-cart exact. Frankly, as a longtime jalopy Porsche 356 driver, I'd feel better if the Fortwo felt a little more dangerous.
The view is good, though. Driver and passenger slightly "staggered" in their seating positions for greater visibility and, with no hood, you could be driving down the street seated in an old-fashioned phone booth.
Who's the Idiot?
According to Schembri, the market for the Fortwo is the "creative class" of "first adopters," consumers who "make a statement of who they are by the products they buy," and are "not defined by age or income, but by attitude and lifestyle."
Like the goateed guy in the Stupidiot.com T-shirt. He's about 20 years old and has been waiting an hour to drive the red Cabriolet. It's finally his turn.
"Would you buy one right now if you had a chance?" we ask as he buckles in.
He smiles at me as if I'm a stupidiot. "Of course."
The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.
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