Nearly every automaker on the planet has suffered from bouts of over-reaching and Smart is hardly an exception. Daimler’s micro-car division succumbed to the desire to fill every conceivable niche a few years back, unsuccessfully adding roadsters and four-door models to its iconic two-door city car. But before the Smart Roadster and ForFour were sent [...]
When your Police Chief is six-feet tall and weighs 280 pounds, you might consider it cruel and unusual punishment to issue him a Smart fortwo as his police cruiser. But that is exactly what the folks in Belle Isle, Florida have done. Heck, if it’s good enough for Batman, it’s good enough for Belle Isle, [...]
Needless to say, the folks over at Smart USA were not pleased to see the results of the latest batch of crash testing from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS did a series of frontal offset crash tests between small and mid-size cars, one of which included a smart ForTwo versus a Mercedes [...]
Last October we advised you not to hold your breath for Daimler’s Car2Go program to come to America. You can breathe again. If you live in Austin, Texas you’ll be able to rent a mild hybrid Smart ForTwo by the minute this fall. Austin was chosen because of its university population and its concern for [...]
Almost a year ago, 13 people squeezed into a smart fortwo. Yes, they were gymnasts. It might someday be easier to fit more than two people in a fortwo if plans to make a longer version of the most diminutive production car sold in the U.S. come to fruition. Smart head Anders-Sundt Jensen has confirmed [...]
One of the most unusual vehicles to grace last year’s SEMA Show in Las Vegas is now up for auction on eBay Motors. Called the BatSmart, this little vehicle was unlike most of the high-octane pieces of rolling artwork at the event in that it used just three pistons and 70 horsepower to move along [...]
Add the smart fortwo to the growing list of products impacted by the economic downturn here in the United States. Last year, the diminutive urban runabout was one of the U.S. market’s few bright spots, with its small dealer network moving nearly 25,000 units and busting through sales expectations along the way.
For much of the [...]
The Smart franchise hasn’t exactly been a blockbuster financial success for Daimler. Although the diminutive city runabouts certainly have their adherents, the entire brand is widely believed to have never turned a profit. Having but a single model to sell, the Fortwo, probably isn’t helping matters, but according to AutoExpress, a second model is on [...]