Pick your jaw up off the floor. The Smart brand, officially spelled with a lowercase “s” that we can’t abide by, is now 20 years old, but seems destined to leave this earth before it has to start worrying about the big three-oh.
Smart’s development partner, Renault, is reportedly entertaining thoughts of leaving the relationship, opening the door to Smart’s death… or substitution.
Sources tell Automobile that Renault plans to hit the bricks once the current co-developed models run their course. Besides the familiar Smart Fortwo (the only model sold in North America), the Daimler-owned brand sells the four-seater Forfour overseas. The same architecture is used for the Renault Twingo, a more conventionally styled micro-mini city car.
Currently, Smart is in the process of converting both of its models to electric propulsion, though the Fortwo has already gone green in the U.S. and Canada (much to the detriment of its already paltry sales).
Should Renault get up and leave, that makes Smart’s future after 2026 mighty hazy. It’s possible that Daimler might keep the brand alive, or simply cull it altogether. A third option would see the parent company create a product offering in the Mercedes-Benz division to retain a presence in the tiny green car segment.
It’s worth noting, as Automobile does, that Chinese auto giant Geely owns a 9.7 percent stake in Daimler, and Geely knows a thing or two about developing and selling small electric cars. The possibilities created by Geely’s presence can’t be discounted.
Should the Smart name disappear from certain Mercedes-Benz dealers in the U.S. and Canada, little would change on North American roads. Through the end of September, Mercedes-Benz USA recorded 959 Smart Fortwo sales, down 63.6 percent over the same period last year. In Canada, Fortwo sales dropped 4.7 percent over the first nine months of 2018, for a total of 264 units.
The EPA rates the 2018 Smart EQ Fortwo’s range at 58 miles.
[Image: Daimler AG]
Tiny invasive species. Die.
Funny!
When you look on the smart USA website they list a “sport package” that is only available when combined with the DCT. The same DCT that isn’t sold in the US.
Mercedes hasn’t fixed this in over a year, because nobody has noticed.
Oh, they’re smart. They’ll figure something out.
Oldsmobile…Geo…Isuzu…Mercury…Hummer…Pontiac…Saturn…Saab…Fisker…Scion…smart…
Plymouth…Suzuki…
Fisker lives on as Karma and Hummer too kind of.
I had the pleasure of test driving a smart before the dealers started popping up.
It was a fun car, but it needed to be way cheaper. It was like driving a gokart, and doing donuts was pretty fun.
If the gen 1 had been brought here with anything other than the abysmal slushbox it was brought here with (and selling for less than it was sold for), it would very likely have found a way to my driveway. For 95% of my driving, an encapsulated (read climate-controlled) seat with four wheels is all I really need. There are few popping up used here for relatively cheap, and it’s always a temptation to snag one just to keep the van parked.
If it had been an actual slushbox, it might have been far better received. What MB put in there was a conventional transverse manual box, with robotized clutch fork and shift rails. Problem was that the initial programming favored firm “Teutonic” shifts, plus a low-speed creep mode to mimic a slushbox. I found that just driving it in manual-shift mode all the time resulted in much better behavior.
And nothing of value was lost.
Smart has never made a decent product. The cars have always been unreliable and have poor fuel economy for their class. I’m surprised the brand’s survived this far.
It only survived because they are built in a heavily subsidized French factory – and the electr5ic ones are (or were) used as carbon credit fodder for Mercedes Benz.
Smart could always replace it with its platform mate the roomier Renault Twingo. I’ve always had a soft spot for the roadster version that we never received in the states. It’s nearing the 25 year make for importation.