A girl's best friend
The ForTwo's green cred is in the bag. And you can change its colour every season. By Alice Fisher
This article appeared in
the Observer on
Sunday April 20 2008 on p74 of the
Comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:00 on April 20 2008.
Smart ForTwo Cabriolet
£10,030
Miles per gallon: 60.1
Seats: 2
Good for: sitting down
Bad for: standing out
They say that familiarity breeds contempt, and after five hours in a traffic jam on the rain-soaked M4 between London and Bristol, I despised almost everything in sight. The man in the plumber's van eating sandwiches. The woman in the Corsa who'd been fiddling with her hair in the rearview mirror for over an hour. I was annoyed with my husband Johnny, too, for only bringing four CDs, all of which we'd now played. To avoid argument, I concentrated on how much I hated DJ Steve Wright burbling on the radio instead. The car's sound system was so good, it sounded like he was in there with us. The swine.
The only thing that didn't annoy me was the Smart ForTwo. Nothing makes you appreciate a car's design like five hours trapped inside it. And the seats were extraordinarily comfortable, with leg room to fidget in and drum my feet on the floor with boredom. The passenger seat was positioned 15cm further back than the driver's so Johnny could keep his distance. He was thankful for that. Even the boot was enough for our needs, holding a suitcase, suit-bag, two coats and three pairs of heels (we were en route to a wedding; I needed choice). And the ForTwo is so economical, with a petrol consumption of 85.7mpg, that I could have afforded to buy another pair of shoes to bring.
The automated five-speed gears meant I had little to do other than sit and sulk, so as I'd read about the safety features - including the Superman-sounding Tridion cell reinforced with ultra-high-strength steel that framed the car - I passed the time by changing lanes and marvelling at the tiny gaps we could squeeze into. Though this 2007 model is larger than the original, it's still only 269.5cm long. So small that if I could get it through my front door, I could park it on my bed. Ridiculous.
Of course, in the sizeist, macho world of motoring, ridicule is something the Smart car is used to taking on the bumper. The ForTwo won't change this, especially as it offers models in the season's key fashion colours. Ours was vivid gold, a take on the metallic trend. The panels are interchangeable so your car won't become (shock horror) passé. Gimmicky, true, but I am a girl and I care what colour my car is, so fine by me. I'd like Smart to take it further and bring the new trends for ruffles and florals to the road ... sure, that's unreasonable, but I was bored. Johnny wasn't so sure about the gold. When we stopped in a service-station car park, he claimed some hoodies jeered at the ForTwo. I suggested that they may have been laughing at him, sat wearing aviator shades and a suit jacket.
I had to admit when we reached our destination that he may have had a point. The ForTwo did stick out in a posh hotel car park full of BMWs and Jaguars. But in a way that made me smile at it fondly. Its aesthetic isn't for everyone, but I found it hard to look at a car that comfortable and efficient with anything but fondness. Despite how horribly familiar I'd become with the ForTwo that day, this had simply bred contentment.
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