Daimler And Renault To Produce Smart Twins

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

Yesterday, we wrote about how Dieter Zetsche needs to start earning his retirement. He took the suggestion to heart. Automobilemag.com has it that the long rumoured liaison between Daimler and Renault will finally bear fruits. Daimler and Renault will have baby twins!

Daimler and Renault-Nissan have at long last reached an agreement to jointly develop the next generation of veeeery small cars by 2014. The resulting car will be branded Smart by Daimler and whatever Renault-Nissan see fit. Apparently, the reason for why these talks kept stalling was that Daimler insisted on sticking to a rear-engine, rear wheel drive layout. Which was kind of, well, foreign to the usually very FWD folks at Renault.

According to the report, Renault will have the leading role in engineering, purchasing and production of the lilliputian-on-wheels. Daimler pretty much outsourced the production and engineering of their smallest offspring. Another development of this agreement is that electric powertrains will play a big role. Renault wants to use its knowledge from its electric fleet on the new car. Petrol engines will also be in the mix, with the choice of three cylinder, 1.0 litre, direct injection, turbocharged engine and a 1.3 & 1.5 litre four cylinder ones.

Busrep.co.za reports that Daimler and Renault (they call them “Peugeot” – those French all look alike, especially from South Africa, and when you copy something from the German edition of the Financial Times) will cross-share production at Renault’s plant in Slovenia (Peugeot don’t have a plant in Slovenia). The Financial Times says that the new version of the Smart car will share the platform with the Twingo, which is currently made in the Slovenian factory. By Renault. According to the FTD, the 4 door version of the Smart/Twingo will be made in Slovenia. The 2 door version of the new baby twins may be produced in the original Smart works in Hambach, France. “Before joint production in Hambach starts, there are many problems to overcome,” says the FTD. “The capacity of the plant is limited, There are numerous open details which must be solved between Daimler and Renault.” Earn your keep, Dr. Z!

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • Lokki Lokki on Feb 19, 2010

    Must resist.... must not MUST NOT ... yield to temptation to post Dumb and Dumber Smart-car joke.... Must... resi

  • Don1967 Don1967 on Feb 20, 2010

    Adorable baby twin sisters = 3 responses. Adorable 20-year old twin sisters = server crash. Car guys never change.

  • Ted “the model is going to be almost 4 inches longer and 2 inches wider than its predecessor”Size matters. In this case there is 6” too much.
  • JMII Despite our past experience with Volvo my wife wants an EX30 badly. Small, upscale, minimalist EV hatch is basically her perfect vehicle.
  • Dukeisduke Is the Volvo EX30 even on sale yet? It was pulled from the NACTOY awards because they were having software problems with the vehicle.
  • Wjtinfwb If you've only got 5k to spend on transportation, I cannot imagine a worse way to spend it than on a GM orphan from Sweden that's 15 years old with 150k on the clock and limited plus expensive parts availability and dwindling techs who'd even want to work on it. Go find a similar vintage Camry or Accord with 150k miles or even a Ford or a Chevy, whatever. Hell, even an old Jaguar is less of a crapshoot than a Saab. At least you can still get parts.
  • Kwik_Shift Brands that were considered from China include BYD, Dayun, Great Wall Motors, Maxus, Nio, Omoda/Chery, Seres, XPeng, and Zeekr. KG Mobility from South Korea also made the list of candidates.That's a lot of car companies from there ready to head here.
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