City car? Really?

[John_H]

Can anyone point me to official website pages, owners manual entries, or Smart advertising which explicitly states that the Smart is:

Designed as a City Car?

While many people may consider the vehicle an ideal city car, I find it hard to believe that Mercedes Benz, Swatch, or Smart have the explicit design goal of designing a car optimized for city driving with only cursory regard for other uses.

The car exceeds 45 mph and has a range in excess of 300 miles. The safety features will help survive incidents far in excess of city environments. So why design a car to exceed the city environment to such a high degree, adding significant cost to the product compared to something intended only for city driving?

I'd suggest that the engineers who designed the car initially and who improved the vehicle for the new markets with the 451 didn't have the design goal to make this a city car and, instead, too many people are making the assumption and repeating it as truth.

If anyone can point me to links, manuals, or magazine articles that quote Smart executives which underscore that this was designed as a city car, I would significantly appreciate it!

- John

[Old smart]

The W450, predecessor to the current W451, was called (by M-B/smart) the "City Coupé."

"The time has never been better for this -- and I am convinced that the Smart Fortwo as an innovative, ecological and agile city car will soon become just as familiar a sight on the streets of New York, Miami or Seattle as it is today in Rome, Berlin or Paris," Zetsche said. Deutsche Welle: Tiny Smart Car to Challenge Giants in US Market | Business | Deutsche Welle | 29.06.2006.

N.B. Dr. Dieter Zetsche - Chairman, Daimler AG; Chairman, Mercedes-Benz Cars group.

[forestacademy]

Cruse is not an option.

That's all I have.

[2smartArizona]

[forestacademy]

OK Here is the problem with the City Car Concept in the U.S.
If I only plan on living and driving in a city, and I was truly trying to be green, then I would use public transportation and rent a car for those few trip out of town I would take a year. Why make car payments, Insurance payments (higher in the city), and pay for parking.
Where I live if you want to go from one city to another, you are going to drive over 1 hr. This is not City driving.

If They were planning on it only being a "City Car" in the EU sense than it would only be sold in Citys like Boston, DC, and Philly not Citys that require hyway driving like LA. And why in the world would we need dealers in places like Nebraska and Iowa.

But we need to remember, their has been almost no U.S. Advertising

[a2jack]

While I agree the Smart was originally designed as a city car, the NA 451 was designed for North America with the kind of driving we do here in mind.

The car is a fine freeway machine and will run 80-85
all day with ease. We, often run 300 mile days in it, and find it is a good, comfortable little road car.

As a city car, in and around Detroit, we find it a rough ride on the crappy city streets.

20k now on the Smart. Many, many more miles on A2Jack

[MPrice2984]

It makes a much better freeway commuter car than it does a city car. The first time you get stuck in a traffic jam you'll know why it's not suited for really crowded city use. Perhaps if it came with a real auto trans?

[Karl Roth]

I took a quick trip to Germany on the net through www.smart.com and searched stadt auto and came up with three pages of results...
karl

[jwight]

Originally Posted by MPrice2984

It makes a much better freeway commuter car than it does a city car. The first time you get stuck in a traffic jam you'll know why it's not suited for really crowded city use. Perhaps if it came with a real auto trans?

Wonder why it does so well in the European traffic jams?

[Blueballz]

Originally Posted by MPrice2984

...Perhaps if it came with a real auto trans?

I agree there....Manual transmissions are a ***** in rush
hour(s) traffic. What's the deal with this "automated" manual transmission, anyway? Edmund's lists the trans
as "AM". What's that?