Smart car bashing

[hogdaddy]

I have run across many on other forums that wanna bash the car and don't take kindly to someone calling my car a piece of crap I am sorry.

It is possible that I may get kicked from one site but I don't care.

Has anyone else encountered this kind of bashing?

[ckgonska]

It happens...
It is weird, people either love this car or hate it.

[NukleoN]

All the time, and usually from the misinformed. Ignore or educate, depends how much effort you want to put in. People tend to do better alone than in groups, and better in person than online. Depends how much effort you want to put into it but some people can be swayed or at least, you can soften their ignorance a bit. ;)

It does tend to be a love or hate thing. Smiles or jeers, but people usually react strongly.

[Godfather]

Do I care if everyone loves my smart? Nope........ I care about it's ability to turn a twisty two lane road into a grin-fest, and get 40 mpg doing it. Is it perfect? Nope..... but what is?

[John_H]

There are "haters" out there, typically uneducated [about the smart's lineage and design] and ignorant [about everything the smart can do].

A typical "hater" is threatened by small cars. The typical resonse is that "Obama's going to make everyone drive a car like that."

I had an old guy come up to me in a Home Depot parking lot saying "Obama doesn't understand what 'Made in America' means." When I asked for clarification, he suggested that with people coming to home depot to get supplies for their jobs or to save money by doing things themselves, not everyone can use small cars. Forget, for the moment, that I was extracting a large piece of rental power equipment from my smart to return. I had to tell him the president doesn't care if people drive big or small cars.

It's the attitude that people are going to be forced to do something they don't want to do that force some to hate what they see as their own impending doom.

Stupidity comes in all forms.

[SubSlr88]

Well, smart bashers are like most people - they know that they don't like it, but can't really just put their finger on WHY they don't like it. In my years I've found that people that are unhappy with themselves tend to be jerks to be around and often are a unhappy with other peoples joys and feel left out because their (car, truck, life - fill in your choice) is mundane and boring and they're jealous.
In general most comments I get about the smart are positive and, on occasion, neutral or seldomly, negative. Most of those types of remarks are from the 'uninformed' bunch who have heard or read negative reviews elsewhere - or are truly 'uninformed', i.e. they know nothing about the car and base their opinion strictly on how it looks.
My standard comeback for negative comments or questions is "suits me fine - you drive what you like."

[jwight]

Goes on a lot: smart bashing on Miata.net

Most have learned to just ignore it - you can't fix stupid*.

*Thank you, Ron White.

[jmatero]

It's funny... most of the people who bash it for safety would never bash a motorcycle driver for taking one on the highway. People generally hate when you challenge the conventional view of anything... Gay Marriage challenges "Marriage". The smart challenges "car" and folks get really freaked. If YOU'RE happy... that's all that counts.

[Neonspinnazz]

I've made a choice to get a smart. Now if you're up to date with high schoolers you'll notice that the smart is not a "cool" car nor is it a "chick magnet" and taking it to school might mean getting labeled as "gay" but for what do I care?

If I'm going to be dumping money into a car it might aswell be one that I actually want! Now my mom is trying to buy me a "hip", "cool", "chick magnet" kind of car no matter how many times I tell her "NO!!" She's not listening so I hope I succeed before she does, kind of a race against money and finance...I still don't know why she's going against my choice of car. Mom's may know what's right but just getting me a car so I can be "cool" is not right at all...

Now about those "kids" at school:

I've tried to use pure logic and reasoning with them to hopefully get them to at least to consider the car for what it is. The only response is that they say that I won't get "laid" and they continue to bash. I've even went as far as just throwing the some unpleasing facts at the cars they think that they could afford flipping burgers (Camaro SS? ), and addon that if they plan to buy such car working at McDonald's that they better be saying "Would you like fries with that?" like something holy and out of this world.

They ignore and keep on bashing...

So what do I do after using facts, reason, and just plain old arguing? I just ignore their ignorant, under-educated, no respect for anything, teen-child teenagers.

[Dunerunner]

People fear what they don't understand and bashing and name calling is the first level of attack. There is usually no desire to research or ask meaningful questions about the topic, issue, or item; in this case a smart car; it is setting barriers against what they see as a threat.

Poor lost souls!!!