Guess who just turned ten years old?

That’s right Smart - and hey, lookit that, it’s about the size of a ten year old too! I kid I kid - but seriously, these things are tiny.

Yet somehow, they’re still built like a Mercedes. They’re heavier than you’d think, and they’re remarkably safe for their size.

When I think back to when the Smart first came out, I recall that at first, they weren’t even going to be a Mercedes, they were actually conceived and nearly brought to market by Swatch, the people that make the watches. Turns out that never happened due to a number of factors, but Merc believed in the concept enough to continue it to fruition, and now the things are running around urban centers all over the world by the thousands.

Even here, in America, I’m starting to see more and more of them - although I have yet to see one on a freeway. Hey, there’s a story: Long road trip in a Smart.

Anyway, full press release after the jump celebrating Smart’s first decade.

Continue Reading…

After years of rumors, speculations, and promised dates long past, Mercedes-Benz have finally begun to sell their popular Smart ForTwo here in the United States. And with a waiting list stretching longer than a year, drivers are not hesitating for their turn behind the wheel of this funky two-seater.

Even with the “right-now” popularity of this car coupled with the rising gas prices, I wanted to see if this little two-seater would be a good alternative to some of the bigger sub-compact cars in its price range. Continue Reading…

And the guys from Koenigseder answer a resounding “Jah!”

And they said there are no dumb questions … anyway, you knew this was bound to happen. Sooner or later, somebody, somewhere would take a Smart Car, and start to trick it out.

In this case, Koenigseder, from Austria, in case your wondering, flared fenders, lowered the ride height via Eibach springs and added 17-inch wheels (what are the size of the stock wheels on these? I swear they look like 12s). Not content with re-doing the outside, they decided to, uh, improve the interior as well with, among other things, floral decals.

We got more pictures after the jump, but even funnier is the translated press release from the Koenigseder site. Take it away Dieter: Continue Reading…

Wow.

This is rather interesting.

From what I gather, the itty-bitty Smart Fortwo, which seats a grand total of…hmmm…two people, can actually fit 13. That’s, uh, a lot more than I expected.

This event was held to celebrate Smart’s 10th anniversary, and anyone could participate. The winners of the contest were a bunch of contortionists, and they managed to fit 13 of them inside the little car. If you haven’t seen a Smart Fortwo before, here are some measurements:

The car is 2.7 by 1.6 meters, which in English translates to 8.8 feet long, or about 8 feet 10 inches by 5.2 feet wide, which is about 5 feet 2 inches. That means, for me at least, I can stretch my arms and be wider than the car, and I’m just about two and a half feet shy of being as tall as the car is long. I can also take three steps and have walked farther than the car’s length.

It’s actually rather hard to explain how small it is until you see it in person, and I have, so how these people managed to fit 13 of themselves inside is beyond me.

Another pic after the jump: Continue Reading…

ee-YOW!!

What you see here is, essentially, a real-world crash test of the much loved (by some) Mercedes Benz Smart ForTwo city car.

This comes by way of CarScoop by way of Jalopnik, and it happened somewhere in North America (there’s some discussion going on as to whether it’s the USA or Canada). Seems that this particular Smart ForTwo got rear-ended by a friggin’ GMC box truck (gross weight of around 10 to 12 thousand pounds) and THEN it got creamed in an offset frontal impact by a FULL SIZED GMC van (and those weigh in at, what, 5500 or 6000 pounds?).

Yes, It might be small, but it’s a small Mercedes Benz, and those guys know how to build them tough.

I know form personal experience. I used to own an 84 300 turbo diesel. We called it The Bismarck because, “it’ll take a lucky shot from the Royal Navy to stop this thing.” Seems like that can be applied here as well. Yes, I know. Physics, size, crush-space, mass, momentum, etc.. But small and light doesn’t mean “unsafe”; it just means that safety is more of an engineering challenge.