What's so smart About The "Smart Car"?

[E-Sabbath]

Obligatory SMART pics of interest.
First Smart in America, ca '00-01.

Smart FourTwo, '08

Frame of Smart, cutaway, color coded.


Explanation of color coding.

Frankly, it’s a bit of a gimmick, unless you need to drive around NYC. Great in Europe, though.

[gonzomax]

@Liberal

That’s all well and good, but F still equals M times A.

Then we should all drive semis fully loaded. Hummers would be unsafe in that case. Too small.
SUVs are inherently unsafe due to bad center of gravity. They roll easy and often. Does that fit in your safety equation. ?
I have driven small cars for many years. I guess I did not get info on what hummer to head on.

[ralph124c]

I just noticed the story in the DRUDGEREPORT: it shows the “SMARTCAR”-with “Dr. Z” (that mustachioed german dude who used to drive Jeeps into walls!)
Remember the dialogue:
“any more questions?”
“Auf wiedersehen”!

[Mr.Moto]

@E-Sabbath

Frankly, it’s a bit of a gimmick, unless you need to drive around NYC. Great in Europe, though.

Yeah, well my Fiat Panda worked just fine for me when I was stationed in Italy. Doesn’t mean they belong on American roads either.

Not that I’m opposed to European cars, small cars, or high-mileage cars, mind, just that those cars need to be designed for the conditions of the American road and American driver to succeed here.

[Liberal]

@gonzomax

Then we should all drive semis fully loaded. Hummers would be unsafe in that case. Too small.
SUVs are inherently unsafe due to bad center of gravity. They roll easy and often. Does that fit in your safety equation. ?
I have driven small cars for many years. I guess I did not get info on what hummer to head on.

Hey, knock yourrself out… so to speak.

[Magiver]

@Cisco

That actually is impressive since the EPA changed their standards. You might find a few non-hybrid/non-diesel cars that beat it, but not many.

I get 33/38 now with my 2000 Saturn SL1. It has a trunk with fold down rear seats. I’ve gotten 10’ sections of pipe in the car with the trunk closed. I could buy a used Saturn and get the engine/transmission rebuilt for less money.

[ManiacMan]

I can’t wait to scrape one off my shoe.

[redtail23]

@Onomatopoeia

That’s when I found that (a) the Euro version is slightly smaller, yet slightly heavier than the one currently being marketed by Mercedes Benz, with different styling, (b) it had a more efficient and powerful engine and higher average MPG rating, and (c) the selling price started at approximately $17,000.

Aha! I looked at the Smarts a couple of years ago and wanted one. A couple months ago, I saw they were available in the US and looked at them again. I thought the mileage and price had gone down! Glad to know I wasn’t imagining things.

[LouisB]

Smart cars are like teenage girls: they’re cute and there ain’t no other reason to get one. No other reason is necessary. I’m not gonna get either one.

[dropzone]

The Smart gets retro points for the DeDion rear suspension, but its short length and tall height make me nervous about its high-speed stability. Then there’s the performance vs economy problem:

@Car and Driver a couple months back

A Lilliputian footprint, a subton curb weight, and a tiny engine should promise stellar fuel mileage, but the Smart does not deliver. We got 32 mpg in mixed driving. Unexceptional mileage might be excused if there were spirited performance to be had, but indeed, the Fortwo is the slowest-accelerating passenger car sold in this country, obliterating the quarter-mile in a tick under 20 seconds.

So, the car is “cute,” but slow, has unimpressive mileage, very little cargo room, and might be iffy on a windy day when the interstates around here ban trailers? There are better choices for me.

[gotpasswords]

@dropzone

So, the car is “cute,” but slow, has unimpressive mileage, very little cargo room, and might be iffy on a windy day when the interstates around here ban trailers? There are better choices for me.

Around here, ability to fit parking spaces is far more important than being able to handle crosswind on the interstate.

You have to buy what makes sense for you. If a powerful engine, cargo capacity, and stability are your key points, then go buy a big pickup truck or a cargo van, and resign yourself to 15 MPG or less, and being unable to parallel-park the thing on a city street.

If you live in a city and never have an opportunity to drive faster than 45 MPH, but always need to find a parking spot and rarely haul anything bigger than three sacks of groceries, then you want to get a small car.

[guizot]

@gotpasswords

Around here, ability to fit parking spaces is far more important than being able to handle crosswind on the interstate.

I thought that height was the major factor in highway winds. A Smart car is pretty small. Would it be a risk during Santa Ana winds?

Anyway, I still wonder why Arnold drives a Hummer. He flies to work, after all.

[Magiver]

@gotpasswords

Around here, ability to fit parking spaces is far more important than being able to handle crosswind on the interstate.

You have to buy what makes sense for you. If a powerful engine, cargo capacity, and stability are your key points, then go buy a big pickup truck or a cargo van, and resign yourself to 15 MPG or less, and being unable to parallel-park the thing on a city street.

If you live in a city and never have an opportunity to drive faster than 45 MPH, but always need to find a parking spot and rarely haul anything bigger than three sacks of groceries, then you want to get a small car.

You could buy a moped with a saddle bag using your criteria and save $10,000. And it’s not like a Honda Civic is hard to park. You can get 4 people AND their groceries in it.
I’d like to be able to climb a hill without a cable car passing me for lack of power. this car should either cost $6000 or get 80 mpg to justify it’s existence. then it would be a cost effective car. It would be a cute car in a retirement villiage where golf carts rule (still wouldn’t have the storage space of a golf cart).

[Shalmanese]

@Liberal

And those are against stationary walls. 10 tons will beat 1 ton no matter how well the 1 ton is padded.

Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you’re also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can’t get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at "passive safety. " The Boxster is better when it comes to “active safety,” which is every bit as important.

Malcolm Gladwell on Automotive Safety

[Liberal]

@Shalmanese

Malcolm Gladwell on Automotive Safety

Oh, sure, I agree. If the driver has the split-second reflexes of Jeff Gordon, and he’s in a car with computerized steering and torsional compensation, along with road-hugging suspension and hair-trigger acceleration, he stands a better of chance of swerving away from a semi rig than does granny on a mo-ped. So I’ll concede that taking stunt driver courses and buying a Porsche or Ferrari can in some cases be just as protective as buying a big car.

[BrainGlutton]

Next up: The TWIKE!

(Laugh now . . . when gas hits $10/gallon you’ll be putting your name on a waiting list . . .)

[Liberal]

@Szlater

Well in the sideimpact test the “stationary wall” is moving at 30mph.

Yeah, but the car isn’t moving sideways. I do agree, though, that side impact is less dependent on overall car mass than frontal impact, simply because frontal impact is all about distance of collapse, which includes the car’s forward mass, while side impact is all about strength of framing, since there’s essentially no room for anything to collapse.

[Mops]

I have driven Smarts since 1999 when my local car sharing club began to offer them.

The car is very convenient to drive in a city environment, easy to find a parking spot and my impression is that the high seat position helps when traversing one’s self in and out of the car when the distance to the next parked car is just a bit larger than one’s own x-axis dimension.

Handling seems to have improved (I have not yet driven the 2nd generation Smart fortwo of 2007-). In the first years they tended to fishtail on ice etc. a bit earlier than other small cars (some slides ended in a deeply mortifying way) but the software seems to have been much improved since then.

Handling at medium speeds doesn’t feel very solid above about 120 km/h. I wouldn’t recommend it for overland commutes.

Cargo capacity is ample for a single person’s weekly or forthnightly grocery shopping - e.g. I got two mineral water crates plus a number of shopping bags into the cargo space. At a pinch you can transport 6 mineral water crates or a christmas tree or tow a trailer

Its niche is for uses where you make a lot of short trips in a city/town environment. Convenience of parking and of ingress/egress counts there. For business uses I mainly see it used by pizza delivery, physiotherapists on home calls, mobile nursing services, the military in very small conflicts…

[suranyi]

@Magiver

You could buy a moped with a saddle bag using your criteria and save $10,000. And it’s not like a Honda Civic is hard to park. You can get 4 people AND their groceries in it.

[Disclaimer – I have no interest in buying a Smart car in the near future.]

I would never buy or ride a moped. The things scare me. I can barely ride a bicycle. I’m sure there are plenty of people like me.

A Smart car is a LOT shorter than a Civic. So it can fit into parking spaces that could never fit a Civic.

Ed

[griffin1977]

@guizot

I thought that height was the major factor in highway winds. A Smart car is pretty small. Would it be a risk during Santa Ana winds?

I would imagine a smart car would be far better in high winds that most of the hideously top heavy SUVs you see around.