The Smart ForTwo has only been on sale in the U.S. market for 9 months, but the company is already preparing to refresh it for 2010. A number of owners of current Smarts were recently invited to come drive cars with some proposed updates for 2010. Based on postings in the SmartCarOfAmerica forum, the drives took place in the San Francisco Bay area over the past week or so. As expected, everyone who participated had to sign a non-disclosure aggrement so details on changes are scant. We certainly wouldn't expect any huge changes to the car so soon after introduction. However, there is certainly room for improvement. Improvements to the automated manual transmission would certainly be welcome by one and all. Other possibilities are the addition of the automatic start/stop system already available in Europe or even the electric version that is expected to be available for testing in California sometime in 2009. More of a long-shot is the diesel engine that in Europe is currently rated as the most fuel efficient vehicle on the road with a combined EU rating of 72 mpg (U.S.). If any of you actually participated and want to share anonymously, feel free to drop us a note with the tip or comment link at the top of the page.

[Source: SmartCarOfAmerica forum]

click to enter the Smart 10 Year gallery

With posts on the new and limited Edit10n, the update on the Smart ED program, and a "why not" story about a tall guy in a Smart Fortwo all coming in the last day, it's clear that Daimler's PR department is feeding us with all sorts of goodies about the distinctive mini car in time for the ten year anniversary of the Smart car. Today, along with a lengthy wrap-up of the Smart car in the last decade (read it after the jump), Daimler has put together a package of 60 pictures to represent the evolution of the Smart from quirky production vehicle to a common sight on European roads. We've got them all in the gallery below. My faves are the ForFun and this one. Yours?


[Source: Daimler]

click to enlarge

Sure, there's no getting around the fact that a Smart Fortwo is a tiny car. But that doesn't mean you can't stuff thirteen people inside. Or, if you actually want to drive the car, there's no reason you can't be 6 feet 7 inches tall.

That's how tall Keith Edwards is, according to a quirky little release sent out by Smart today. Edwards, who belongs to the appropriately-named Tall Persons Club GB & Ireland, drives 20,000 miles a year and is happy to talk about how the little car fits him well.

"I find it remarkably comfortable, even when I've completed my regular round trip from Devon to my firm's headquarters in Cambridge," he said in a statement. "It also only takes 10 minutes to wash and I never tire of people's reactions when I climb out, but it is the smart's running costs that have really impressed and as well as saving hundreds of pounds on insurance and tax I'm using about £30 less fuel a month."

[Source: Smart]

Click on image for complete gallery

Break out the party balloons, Smart is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The brand started as a joint venture from Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch and Mercedes and began selling cars back in, wow, 1998. Well, since anniversaries are also good marketing opportunities, Smart has launched a special edition, called Edit10n, to mark the occasion. The Edit10n is so limited, in fact, that only 500 are going to be produced. What makes it special? Chrome inserts, exclusive logos, anti-fog headlights, power pack, heated seats, special commemorative plaque at the stick and an improved stereo system. You can buy it, if you're lucky, with the 0.8 cdi engine or the 1.0 liter 84hp gasoline. It isn't going to be cheap: prices range from €16,850 to €19,790.



[Source: Le Blog Auto]

Smart already offers a tuned up version of the Fortwo in Europe, named Brabus, for those who think that its original power is not enough. But wait, there's even more now: Austrian tuner Königseder decided that the two standard engine options weren't enough, so they sell two versions that churn out 65 HP from the 0.8-liter diesel and 104 from the 1.0-liter gasoline. The standard versions range from 61 to 84 HP, and the Brabus goes up to 98.

Aesthetically, Königseder added then some flower stickers, lowered the suspension 30 mm and replaced the rims with 17-inchers. Anything goes to make the small urban car to stand out from the rest, right? At least the mhd (micro hybrid) is already on sale.



UPDATE: name corrected. Thanks to John M.
[Source: Le Blog Auto]

Even though the Smart ForTwo is a great looking and popular car, there's just not a lot of places for crash impact energy to go in a vehicle this small. This is part of the reason that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, when it announced crash test results for the ForTwo on Thursday, issued some lackluster ratings and a "safety concern" footnote to report a door coming unlatched during a side crash. Overall, the 2008 ForTwo scored four stars for the driver in a front impact, three for a passenger in the same situation, five and three for resisting rolling over. These results are neither great nor amazingly bad, writes Harry Stoffer in Automotive News, and it bears repeating that the front impact scores only compare similar-sized vehicles hitting each other. Not sure how the ForTwo would handle a Escalade at 100mph.


[Source: Harry Stoffer / Automotive News]

click to enlarge

Thanks to a long and popular run in Europe and solid sales in the U.S., the Smart ForTwo is an international hit (soon, we'll be thanking Miley Cyrus for years for breaking out the young girl Smart market). Daimler is especially proud of the second-generation ForTwo, which has been on sale for about a year and is available in 37 countries. Daimler recently sold the 100,000 second-gen Smart ForTwo. A 36-year-old woman bought the car in Munich yesterday. So, Daimler, you've proven you can sell these small cars - even in a country where they might not be seen as manly enough - now make with the electric versions already.

The smart limited two, unveiled in Geneva.

One reason that micro-vehicles like the smart exist is so that they can cut down on congestion. There is only so much space available in big urban areas, and parking spots are often hard to come by. So, to pack more vehicles in the same amount of parking spots, you've got to have smaller vehicles. Unless, of course, laws prohibit these small cars from taking advantage of their enhanced parking possibilities. This seems to be a problem out in California; "If these things sell in any kind of reasonable numbers, we're going to have to deal with it," said Matt Nichol, a transportation planner in Berkeley. Selling in reasonable numbers they are, so hopefully smart cars will be given special parking privileges soon enough.

Smart is willing to help, says U.S. spokesman Ken Kettenbeil, "It's going to be a lot of work because each city has its own policies, but we've started." We think it just makes sense and really is in everybody's best interest to make sure smart cars can make use of their diminutive size and, well, park smartly.

[Source: SF Gate]

We've been hearing about electric Smart cars for ages now and although some have been made and even test driven, these EVs haven't seemed to have the full weight of Daimler AG behind them. Of course, considering they are headed by CEO Dieter Zetsche who was once quoted as saying, "buyers don't really want electric cars," it's little wonder. Thankfully, the tide may be turning.

According to USA Today, Mercedes-Benz says it will have a demonstration fleet of practical, if small, electric vehicles on the road in two to three years." No, these have nothing to do with the 100 Smart eds being shipped to Britain with the Zebra sodium-nickel chloride battery. It seems these babies will be equipped with modern lithium ion batteries Mercedes has described as "breakthrough".

One of the reasons given by Vice President Herbert Kohler for building this Smart flotilla, according to the article, is "to be sure the setup is right for mass production." Whoa! For a minute there I thought he said something about mass producing electric Smart cars. Hopefully, it won't take the electric Smarts ten years to reach America like the gas version.




[Source: USA Today]

Click image for a hi-res gallery of the smart forfun²

The car's little, but the birthday's big - smart turns ten this year. The annual gathering of owners and aficionados known as the smart Festival will take place in late June at Mercedes-Benz World, which is located at the UK's historic Brooklands circuit. Fans who make the pilgrimage to the fest will be able to socialize, take in smart-related exhibits, test drive the smart fortwo EV, and see the nutty, Unimog-engined smart forfun² micro-monster in action, an experience that may be worth the price of admission by itself. We'd imagine the parking situation at a smart car confab like this is pretty terrific, too. The official press release is pasted after the jump.

When the second-generation Smart ForTwo entered production earlier this year, its EU mileage ratings put it at the top of the heap for internal combustion engined cars by a pretty wide margin. On the EU combined cycle the diesel version was rated at 71.3 mpg (US) with CO₂ emissions of only 88 g/km. The Italian magazine Quattroruote decided to see if that was achievable in the real world. They laid out a 1,000 km route consisting of highways, traffic jams, mountain roads and urban settings in Rome, Balzano and Salzburg. The bottom line is that they consumed 33 L of diesel to cover the distance, matching the official ratings.

[Source: Daimler]

In mid-December Daimler AG will start turning over about 100 battery-powered Smart ForTwos to customers in Central London for a large-scale field test. The cars will be leased mainly to fleets, including the London police, for a four-year trial that will eventually also include two other European cities. The first batch of cars will be equipped with a nickel metal hydride battery packs that should give a range of about 65 miles from a three and a half hour charge. London was chosen for the first trial because they already have a network of free public charging stations. If the test goes well, Daimler plans to launch the electric Smart commercially as soon as 2010.

[Source: Financial Times]

The Truth About Cars used to say the Smart ForTwo excels at just one thing: unmetered parallel parking. In their review of the new ForTwo, TTAC says the second-generation vehicle is "a great idea in theory, a laughable device in practice. " They detail their charges here.

The main problems, TTAC says, is that this is a, basically, a toy car. It doesn't have the oomph needed for the kind of highway driving we're used to and the transmission is pretty bad (they say it "still shifts the way Frank Costanza talks," if that means anything to you Seinfeld fans).

While the luggage space is larger and improved suspension is better than in the first version, the ForTwo, they say, still isn't quite ready for prime time. The only ForTwo I've only driven was a Brabus diesel, and that trip was only around the block, but it was all right. We look forward to giving the US version of the ForTwo a deeper review of our own in the future.

[Source: TTAC]

As part of the promotions leading up to the US sales launch of the Smart ForTwo next January, the US distributor has converted a Venice Beach CA building into a Smart House. The interior of the Smart house is designed to evoke the lifestyles of the the primary purchasers of the Smart: young urban hipsters, whatever the hell that means. The main goal of the house is of course to sell cars and so visitors will be able to check out four of them on the inside with more outside available for test drives. There are more details on the Smart house after the jump including the address and hours.

[Source: Smart USA]

Below the fold are three videos I think you'll find interesting. The first video is from the Aptera launch party. The Aptera video has lots of cool music and people enjoying the debut of this very cool car. The second video below the fold is filled with Nissan's concept cars. The Nissan concepts are debuting at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show and the video includes the cool interior of the Round Box roadster. The third video is the Smart ForTwo Hybrid. The mild hybrid system makes the tiny smart that much greener.

[Source: YouTube, Motor Authority]