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Stuart Watson
6NEWS Reporter |
I was taking my wife out for dinner and a movie Saturday night and we were driving out Independence in the middle of a thunderstorm and her eyes track like radar to the left at the Beck Imports lot.
“SMART CAR!” she says.
So this afternoon on the way to an assignment, I talked my colleagues Kelly and Steve into stopping by to take a look.
The web gods here at wcnc.com have sternly cautioned us against including opinion in these blogs. Don’t ask me how you do that but them’s the rules so I’ll stick to the facts.
The salesman said the two-seater gets 40mpg in the city and 60 on the road.
The sticker is – well you can see the sticker. Once there are actual Smart Car dealers I wonder what will happen to that sticker. As a factual matter you can buy a Mini-Cooper with the Works new for less than that. Or almost two hybrids.
The same dealership also has a Mercedes McLaren. It does not have a sticker. I presume it goes along the lines of “if you have to ask….” But I read on the web they run around $450,000.
Here’s the kicker. The salesman tells me when they took the McLaren and the Smart Car to a Car Show – the crowd gathers around the Smart Car! He says when they drive the thing it stops traffic.
Dealerships won’t be around for a while. But if you want to be the first kid on the block with a car that attracts a lot of attention (including my wife’s) well, they’re in Charlotte.
I didn’t get a test drive, but I’m told you can park the darn thing perpendicular to the curb!
I really liked your Blog on the Smart Car, and it is pretty smart. My wife and I travel to Geneva and Milan every year and saw them years ago there. They are like candy over there, and come in very stylish models. They also have a convertible. I am sure they will "NOT" catch on here as the towns are closer together, the roads are smaller and the cars are really made for that in mind and made for shorter travels. The one thing we did notice this year on our trip as we drove from Milan to Torino was that there were very little use of them on the highway, but there was another model of a Mercedes that was the 140 that they really should have looked at doing here instead of the Smart Car, now that would have been SMART! Oh, and our car was a BMW, which we easily did 220KM hour. God that was NICE!
The SMART car would be a very nice vehicle for commuting to work or school, or even for a hop to the store for groceries or goodies if it had a SMART price, which it won't when it arives on our shores in numbers. The car will retail for about $20,000, which is definately DUMB. For the price of a SMART car you can buy any number of cute fuel-efficient and fun cars, uncluding a stripped down Mini-Cooper. If the people at SMART car were truely smart, they would sell the little two-seater for $10,000 or less. At that price, they would sell like ice cubes in the desert. Unfortunately, the over-priced SMART car will die becuase of STUPID corporate greed. Its not SMART to sell a little two seater for more than the market will bear, unless you want to sell cars to those who have more money than smarts.
I've heard that the Smart Two will be in the USA later this year and prices will start at $9,900. I had one in England for 2 years and loved it. It was zippy and gave 60 mpg no problem. It had all the gadgets - electric windows, power steering, ABS, air conditioning, cd player, traction control etc etc... I cant wait until they come out over here.. I saw one last week on US 1 just outside Raleigh!