I’ spotted these two little twins in front of a rural house on the way to our regular hiking spot, and had to stop and find out; are they both for sale? Two for the price of one?
The sign on the windshield doesn’t answer that clearly. “For Two”; does that mean $6000 for two? Or is it referring to the name “Fortwo”? Or is it pointing out the obvious, that this is a car for two? Or?
That’s a crack pipe price worthy of Craigslist. He should be asking 4,000. I can think of a lot of cars that are more comfortable from 2013 for what he’s asking. The problem with the Smarts is that you don’t get stellar mileage (they get what a Yaris or Focus gets) or go-kart fundynamics to compensate for the awful ride and Sturm und drang as the Germans say it. They’re only good if you need to park in Portland every day.
Smart is a classic missed opportunity. This is the proper niche for pure electric cars. A cheap short-distance shoppingmobile. Plug in overnight, drive to work or store, go home, plug in. Near-zero energy cost. With a gas engine it has no advantage at all.
All Smarts now sold in the US are pure electric.
And in the process of making the switch, two thirds of Smart dealers handed in their franchise. Now it only works as a city car. Range is 50-60 miles.
polistra:
I could be wrong but I believe that smart has switched to selling purely electric cars…at least in the US.
smarts sold in Europe had a diesel engine and with a small diesel these cars were reasonably economical. What I find/found surprising is that the 1st generation smart didn’t use a CVT. I wonder why?
The Smart is a niche vehicle. It only really makes sense for use in an urban area where the owner frequently street parks and parking is scarce. Visiting Italy, I could see the sense of such a car, but in rural Oregon? Purely a fashion statement.
Which is okay….
Whenever I see a Smart car, the first thing I have to think is “where did the other half go?”
Hmm, the paperwork is so unclear I wonder if the seller didn’t buy both of them by accident.
I’m afraid you clearly wrote “For two” in the quantity field of the order form, you’ll just have to accept delivery of both units
The model name of the car is the “Smart ForTwo” (in Europe, anyway because for awhile they had a four seat version the “Smart ForFour”). So the way the seller is listing the car, he’s either possibly doing a bait-and-switch or misspelling the car’s model name.
Actually, both the ForTwo and ForFour are still available. The current Smart ForFour model is essentially the same car as the Renault Twingo.
The Smart Set – updated for the 21st Century?
Love the artwork.
Never saw the utility in one of these, even though I really want to like them. I only drive places for the most part when I am purchasing more than I can carry while walking or on transit. If I’m going out for dinner or to meet friends, say, I’m probably going to want to have a drink or two so it’s transit or cab. But the smart can’t even handle a weeks worth of groceries. It’s an answer to a question that at least I (as someone who is probably in the target market as a near-downtown-city-dweller) haven’t asked.
What’s worse than owning a smart car? Owning two of them.
The first generation smart is easily the worst car I have ever driven, if you only include cars in good repair. The transmission alone is enough to put it in that category, but the list of vices is long.
One for the price of two?
Ah, the Oxymoron, by Mercedes.
One for each foot, perchance?
At any price, even as when twinned, an undesirable way to move about. Though apparently, very safe if crashed, which is to be wished for.
About a year ago, I came *this* close to buying an electric smart car, I had test-driven the gas version a few years ago, and liked everything but the transmission. The electric powertrain solved that.
Last year, off-lease electric smarts were being dumped at auction by MB-USA. You could get one at retail for five grand, with 25-30k on the clock. Like I said, I came *this* close.
But there were issues of ownership. You see, when they sere sold or leased new, MB-USA owned the battery. Even if you bought one outright, you paid $99/mo to “lease” the battery. At resale, there was a LOT of confusion (well-documented on the smart car forum) about whether the resale buyer had to continue paying the $99/mo lease on the battery. Calls and emails to MB-USA were responded to with differing answers, depending on who picked up the phone.
Five grand for a low-miles electric city runabout seemed like a bargain to me. It still does, but with battery ownership unclear, I just couldn’t pull the trigger.
I suppose you could have just given the battery back to MBUSA and sourced the AAs yourself.
😉
In my current inner-city circumstances, that would be hugely tempting, though the Smart was always silly-expensive here (and now is no longer sold). Based on past pricing, the electric would have been $20k US, and perhaps $14K a year old. But at five grand for a warranty-covered city electric, one apparently way, way nicer than the old car – I would!
Buying an electric car to suit your current circumstances.
I see what you did there. Watt a great idea.
Ohm my god those puns make me Hertz, Coulomb you come up with a better Gauss?
Oh, switch it off you two.
A luxury car dealer in Edmonton has a large number of Smart cars on sale. Probably from the fleet of a car sharing company.
Not sure what year or for how much. This feature now makes me want to check out them out. And as I drive buy the dealership on the way to work each day I’ll be watching to see how quickly they move off they lot. I checked out a well used Smart car at another dealer last year and it was in a sad state. I’m thinking these are best suit d for mild climates.
I don’t really understand the hate, I had (wifey actually) a ’09 Cabrio, which I still think is the ONLY way to have this car. Now, you have to look past the parts and service horror show that comes part and parcel with the experience ( think MB pricing and snootiness ) coupled with almost English reliability, but when all stars align and you are zipping (shifting manually of course) along with the roof back, all is good. Which, by the way is the same thing you get in a Miata, although with WAY more fun, reliability and parts and service affordability and mostly similar economy. The SMART experience is like this: If, out of 100 people that saw the car, 80 thought it cute and fun, but only 2 or maybe 1 would think enough of it and past its limitations to buy one. And that was used, with used values. The Miata experience was more like the same 80 liked it, but 20 would buy one. The Miata was way more salable when it was time to part company, the SMART, not nearly as much so. I can only imagine the sedan to be virtually unsaleable, unless super cheap. By the way, the gas three pot was made by Mitsu, just to impress you all the more. FWIW, we got 41.8 MPG average, so it was ok that way, but for fun, you should all try to replace the alternator in one of these sometime! Fun!
Here is it in all its glory:
I agree on the smart cabriolet being the way to go. But aside from a cheap way to get a convertible, smarts have an extremely narrow appeal. I guess they work as a tiny, parkable city car for someone who is adamantly opposed to public transportation and/or being at the mercy of the weather for taking a bicycle. But how can you take a smart on the freeway for a trip of any length? Besides the punishing ride, where do you put your luggage?
From the perspective of a more practical motorcycle that you can use in inclement weather, the smart cabriolet is okay. But as a daily-driver in any other circumstance? Not so much.
Here’s the best one I’ve seen!
Do you think those wheels look like standard ones? I’m not sure there is any more Brabus there than the badge, which would make sense given the $$$ needed for the Brabus version.
From the first time that I ever saw one, Smart cars just remind me of a 2 hole outhouse on wheels.
I split my sides laughing the first time I saw a Smart. Still rarely see them in rural Ireland, and I still think they’re a joke. The Toyota IQ makes much more sense, but still didn’t sell well.
We had one for a year. In San Francisco, there are tons of spaces-between-driveways where the ForTwo fit perfectly. However, my mate didn’t dig it. The plan was: Keep the big Saab wagon and sell the underused 3-series wagon so we still had two rigs but not a big rig. The first one was lemon-lawed. Then like fools, we took the replacement. We were driving a drag queen home in it one night (you could SORT of fit someone in the “way” back). She called it the Clown Car which I mis-heard as “Town Car”. We called it the Town Car till it was sold off. Pluses: RWD. Plucky. Spunky in manual shift. Negatives: Super lame mpg and twitchy highway handling.