September 14, 2007
Small Car, Big City
The Smart car has arrived in the States, and measuring at 8 feet and 8 inches long and 5 feet wide, the miniscule vehicle got some big attention in the Big Apple this week.
The car is around 3 feet shorter than the Mini Cooper, and could probably fit inside most of the gas guzzling SUVs in town. The 1800-pounder will hit the market stateside in early 2008, but will anyone want it? Business Week reports "Its base price is $12,000, and it's hard to beat the fuel efficiency of about 40 miles per gallon."
In New York, this car will get all the good parking spots -- as there's little it couldn't fit into. The Museum of Modern Art even displayed it (pictured) and called it "an innovative, stylish solution to two practical problems: urban crowding and diminishing energy." But is it safe to drive? Many have expressed concern over how it would handle, especially in the city streets, on the bridges, the FDR and West Side Highway. One bump from a cab while traveling at a high speed may send this thing flying, but the company is expecting 4 of 5 stars from the U.S. crash-test results that are coming out later this year.
The European New Car Assessment Program crash-tested a previous model, the Smart City Coupe, and gave it a three-star rating out of a possible five. The U.S. model is almost 8 inches longer than the European one, with safey improvements including a steel safety "cage" inside, more air bags, and "intelligent" seatbelts that sense motion changes.Some fun facts: More than 20,000 people have signed up to be Smart car owners in the U.S. The car has a 70-horsepower, 1-liter, three-cylinder engine. And it was all created by Nicolas Hayek, inventor of the Swatch watch. He "went to Mercedes-Benz with his idea for an 'ultra-urban' car with interchangeable body panels for style and color -- a feature similar to the trendy Swiss watch. The prototype of the Smart City Coupe was introduced in Germany in 1997." Make your own, here!
Photo via Cloudy Thought's Flickr.
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"Some fun facts: ... The car has a 70-horsepower, 1-liter, three-cylinder engine."
Ain't NOTHING fun about that.
Care to lay odds on how long it'll take for the first one on the road to get crumpled by a taxi?
I saw these things all over Amsterdam. I think they are a great idea for cities.
If the entire city were like Old Europe or the Financial Districts of New York and Boston then this car would be great. But do you really want to be in one of these cars on the Avenues with cabs, buses, and SUVs doing 60 MPH?
smart cars do better in crashes then a taxi (or an SUV for that matter) would: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ju6t-yyoU8s
I love everything but the price. A car you can't take out of the city should be cheaper than $12k.
I don't know the speed limit in Manhattan is but I'm pretty sure it ain't 60mph.
Good for the people who buys them, reverse the SUV trend. 40mpg in the city is great gas mileage, refuse to be a slave to big oil.
Motorcycles are dangerous in a crash, too so why the hate towards a small, fuel efficient auto?
[6] wrote:
According to the company webpage, the Smart Car can do up to 90mph, so there's no reason you couldn't take it out of the city. Not like we're talking about a golf cart here.number six is correct, get the price to half.
and we're not the first to gripe about it's price tag.
I don't know the speed limit in Manhattan is but I'm pretty sure it ain't 60mph.
And cabs always obey traffic laws? :) I have been on some very fast late night cab rides. Maybe not 60 MPH but pretty fast.
Anyway, cool video but they didn't show what would happen to a Smart in a side impact from a conventional car or SUV. As they said at the end of the video, 70 MPH into concrete would have been fatal in either car so what was the point really?
I saw one of these getting on an on ramp to the BQE last year. It looked strange and slightly fragile in the middle of all the other cars. It sounds like they've given some good thought to the safety features though.
They should be a bit cheaper, considering both the Nissan Versa and Toyota Yaris (smaller cars with good names) are also around $12K.
smart cars do better in crashes then a taxi (or an SUV for that matter) would
That video does not prove your point. What else do you have?
If everyone drove responsible vehicles like this, there would be no crash/safety concerns.
*If everyone drove responsible vehicles like this, there would be no crash/safety concerns.*
sure there would be, it would just be minimized.
Here's my problem with the Smartcar. A car in the city is good for two things, which are: hauling cargo, like your once-a-month trip to Fairway; and leaving the city entirely. The Smartcar isn't good for either of these things, because they have no cargo capacity, and they'd be terrifying on the highway.
Sure, you could use it to commute to work, I guess, but if you're gonna do that, why not just take the train? The Smartcar may be more economical and eco-friendly than a regular car, but the subway beats them both.
the nissan Versa is not a "smaller" car.
for those griping about the price: keep in mind that the Smart is made in France; the car would be cheaper if the exchange rate vs euros was better.
there's another crash test video out there that shows the Smart in a front end collision with a Mercedes E-Class. The Smart held up really well.
i reverse commute. i want one.
"If everyone drove responsible vehicles like this, there would be no crash/safety concerns.
[14] Posted by: guest | September 14, 2007 2:58 PM "
Until you hit a bus.
A truck.
Or a tree.
Or hell even a mailbox-
It's probably still safer than most pre 1990 cars however.
the car would be cheaper if the exchange rate vs euros was better.
Not really. That seems to make sense on the surface but ultimately you sell a car for what you can get for it. If you can't make a profit you shouldn't enter the market, period. And you don't cut the price if you can get more, especially with a quirky import product that isn't intended for the masses. When the yen was lower the Japanese didn't cut prices. They held increases just low enough to the point where they could gain marketshare.
OK, you're all silly. First, Minis are everywhere so the size issue is a non issue. NEXT, all you salty commenters out there, have you ever been in a smart car? they can go 100 mph, not safely, but i assure you, it's not soo bad. You can got 60 and feel safe. so you CAN take them out of the city. I have travelled by smart many times and LOVE them. i have my deposit down to order one, and $12K for a Mercedes made car? Pretty good. HATERS....
You can't compare a Mini Cooper. That's nearly 50% longer. In fact, that's supposed to be one of the good things about Smart cars, that you could park it perpendicular to the curb in a much smaller space and avoid parallel parking. Unfortunately, not parallel parking is against the law in NY if you're not using angled parking spaces or a parking lot.
Funny how the common safety concern is, "How safe is this if an SUV hits it?" Rather than, "Let's all drive these and loose the SUVs."
It's the same logic the NRA uses to justify guns.
C'mon America. Stop trying to kill everyone else before they kill you and start acting like human beings. Tell yourself it's what Jesus wants you to do. :-)
Information on the Smart Car has been hard to find. I started my own fourm and web site dedicated to the 2008 Smart fortwo. If you are looking for more smart information you should visit the site!
www.smartfourm.com
New York City should classify SUV's as the light trucks that they are, and exercize its right to ban them from the parkways. This would reduce SUV's very quickly, very dramatically. All of its streets would be made safer for vehicles appropriate to the city, like this one.