Not sexy, but Smart

[lagilman]

Smart Fortwo Set to Come Across the Pond
By Matthias Pfannmüller (Road & Track, via YahooNews)

"When the Smart Fortwo arrives in the U.S. in early 2008, parent company DaimlerChrysler doesn't want to repeat past mistakes. The first Smart hit the European market in 1998, but the brand has never been profitable. With the new Fortwo, Smart is starting anew with a car tailor-made for the United States. Standard safety features include four airbags, ABS and stability control. The U.S. Fortwo will have increased cabin and trunk space and a new 1.0-liter 3-cylinder engine making 84 bhp, mated to a refined semi-automatic transmission. Company executives claim the car will get about 40 mpg.

Three models will be available: The Pure with optional air conditioning starts at $11,000; the better-equipped Passion will cost $13,000 and the Convertible will be $15,000. A Brabus version with more power will be presented at the Geneva show in March. Roger Penske's UnitedAuto Group will be the exclusive distributor in the U.S., and they will be taking orders in about two months on their Web site, www.smartusa.com."

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They're ugly. They're very very ugly. In a bulldog-cute sort of way. And I think they're overpriced, compared to a basic Toyota, fer'ex. But you can park them anywhere, and if the mileage holds up over time.... for short-haul commuters and grocery-getters, at least, this may be the Next Car To Own.

I wouldn't want to drive more than an hour anywhere in it, tho.



ETA: and, best quote of the day: Speaking to MarketWatch's David Weidner about why a hedge fund would want to go public, a finance professor said, "When the smart money is pulling out, it's time to start selling to the dumb money." OUCH!
ETA2: second-best quote of the day: "People on the Internet? Really like porn. Who knew?"
ETA3: I may have had too much caffeine already today. Or maybe it's still yesterday's caffeine. I dunno.

Comments

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I want one! Hell, I just want to admire it and park it and call it George. They're the first pet car.

[lagilman]

*laugh* That was sort of my reaction to seeing the first one in Europe, back in the day. "Awww, is so widdle an cuuuute. But it's not a car!"

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Sigh. I love the tiny. It's all about the tiny.

[lagilman]

I just can't stand that icon. It cracks me up, every time. And then I look at it again, and I crack up again...

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Hee! You can thank semiotic_pirate for that. She's a bad influence.

[madmoravian.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have one of them, they're not ugly at all.

I'd bet, however, that someone 6'5" can't fit into one. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I wonder if it would fit into the bed of my pickup if we have to evacuate from another hurricane?

[autojim.livejournal.com]

I'm 6'4", and I fit in the current smart fortwo just fine.

Former McLaren Racing technical director Patrick Head is somewhere on the far side of 6'6" and had one for a daily driver at one point.

The 2nd-gen version we'll be getting is a skosh bigger than the current one.

I'm holding out for the diesel version. The current diesel fortwo gets around 60 mpg on the EU cycle, and is apparently available in Canada right now.

However, the USEPA and CARB are being recalcitrant dolts w.r.t. emissions standard reciprocity with the EU, so the diesel may not make the trip across the Atlantic. This is a rant for another time in another blog (probably my own, after the trip report I've just promised people).

From a business perspective, DCX's awarding of the franchise to Penske's UAG is brilliant. The Captain is quite possibly the smartest dude in business right now -- ANY business -- and he's an experienced pro at making stuff written off by others as "turds" into profitable players (Detroit Diesel, United Auto Group, Michigan International Speedway). He's also a looooooooooong time car dealership owner (like back to the early 1960s) in his own right.

My employer's CEO was Penske's right-hand-man during the Detroit Diesel years and they're still good friends. This is one of the big reasons I'm happy to be working there even when other parts of the auto supplier business is getting lots of scary press (and lots of court time during Chapter 11 proceedings).

The national media's treatment of the domestic auto business is the subject of another future rant in my part of the web.

madmoravian

[(Anonymous)]

Glad to be proven wrong. I saw on their site that they have enough shoulder room for two folks 6'4" to sit in the front seats. They did not mention anything about headroom, so I wondered.

And, unfortunately, it's too long to fit in the bed of my pickup in case of evacuation. It'd come closer to fitting in "Leviathan", but my "Mat Burns" has a short bed.

Re: madmoravian

[autojim.livejournal.com]

Probably wouldn't fit in Leviathan, either, as he's got a short (6'6") box despite being a Crew Cab F350. It *might* fit in the trailer in front of the Cobra, though, if I build a ramp setup that would raise the smart up at the rear just enough to tuck the nose of the Cobra under it, but I'd lose the workbench and tire/tool storage in the process. :)

(see icon... the Mercedes isn't mine, it belonged to a friend, but we used my truck and trailer to haul it to/from South Bend. That pic was taken as we were putting on all the sponsor stickers for the 2005 Cannonball One Lap of America. F has since sold that car.)

Re: madmoravian

[lagilman]

I need you guys here to help me haul a sofa... *grin*

[autojim.livejournal.com]

If I was nearby, I'd help. Really.

The most recent Odd Use For A Car Trailer was to fill about 20' of its 26' box with Christmas presents for HAVEN, the local DV shelter that K volunteers at. The folks at the church who had organized the donation of gifts were pleasantly surprised to find we had One Vehicle To Haul Them All without smushing anything (plus K and I helped the other groups load their stuff before and after our load was, well, loaded).

I actually used that trailer before I even owned it to move from my apartment to K's house back in September of '98, and I've been here ever since. I bought it (as a package with the van that preceded Leviathan as Tow Beast) from a former coworker at Ford in May of '99.

[autojim.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's a dangling participle in that last post. :)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm! Part of me is thinking "but I need a car that hauls" and the other part is "not as soon as you haul all the crap out of your house."

I bet if it takes off in the US market, they'll bring back their itty SUV version.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

I was recently reading an article on building smaller houses, and there was an interesting quote about tailoring what you buy to what you use 90% of the time and sorting out something for the other 10%, rather than buying for what you might need 10% of the time. There's a lot of truth to that - if the average cost per year of car ownership is $6,000, that takes care of monthly public transportation passes for a year plus car rentals once a week with several thousand dollars to spare - but there's still a very pioneer mindset in US consumption, where one feels the need to stockpile anything one could possibly need.

[autojim.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time, back on GEnie, someone challenged me to work out the cost of my then commute in my car vs. using available public transport. I forget the exact figures, but the commute, one way, via car was 25 miles, took 35 minutes even in rush hour, and cost something like $6 in 1994 dollars including the then car payment, depreciation, and insurance.

The trip via public transport involved walking almost 5 miles along a US highway (not an Interstate), riding one bus 10 miles the wrong direction to transfer to another bus (on a different system) that went 15 miles past my office to transfer to yet another bus that stopped no closer than 2 miles to the office, took about 2.5 hours (depending on my walking speed and the weather conditions I was walking in), and would limit me to a 9am to 3pm workday using the earliest bus combo in the morning and the latest bus combo in the afternoon. And it cost about $10 each way. I never actually attempted to make that trip -- the workday time limits wouldn't have gone over well with the boss (topped with the fact that I worked at one of the Big Three US automakers at the time!).

Now, if I lived in NYC, Toronto, Chicago, or a city like that with a unified public transportation system, and chose to live within an easy walk of a bus stop and/or train station for that system, and my office was similarly located, it'd work out better. If I lived in one of those places (and there are them who enjoy it. I enjoy being in places like that for about a week, max. Then I gotta drive somewhere. Myself. In my own car. It's therapy more than transportation at that point), owning a car would be more of an *in*convenience than a convenience. Whenever I visit one of those urban areas, the car is usually parked for pretty much the duration of the visit.

But I lived then in ex-urban Detroit (closer to Ann Arbor) and live now in surburban Detroit. Currently, both my office and my home are located in (different) communities that don't participate in the taxpayer-subsidized-and-never-profitable suburban bus system. It's actually physically impossible to get from here to there by bus unless I hire one of my very own (which will cost more than driving my own vehicle).

I'd like to have a smart car for commuter duty, actually. One, it'd be more economical in operation (although using the fuel savings for the recovery of the purchase price of the car vs. driving my current diesel truck at $2.50/gallon fuel costs is about 8 years at my current miles/year rate -- longer at lower fuel prices, shorter at higher fuel prices, but gas/diesel would have to hit $7/gallon to pay it back in the duration of a 4-year note). Two, less environmental footprint (one and two go pretty much hand in hand). Three, the truck has 201K miles on the odo as of today and I'd like to hold onto it for a long while longer 'cause a replacement will be wicked-expensive (like US$50K or so), and sparing it the wear and tear of the daily commute will help in that measure.

But... K is starting grad school in the fall, and no new rolling stock for Jim for the duration... unless I get a car allowance at work, something vanishingly unlikely to happen.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

They're a bit overpriced, I agree. Especially since you could get a 2007 Mini for $19K, which is a bigger, cuter car that gets the same mileage. Still: I kind of want one.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

I totally agree on the Mini - gorgeously designed car - except on one point:

which is a bigger, cuter car

The idea of buying one mini-car over another because it's bigger amuses me, given that the point of mini-cars is that you're paying for them to go smaller. :)

[equesgal.livejournal.com]

I knew there was some reason I hadn't bought my new car yet!