Smart Brand Car

I can't imagine risking the safety of ANYONE in my family in one of those death traps. Granted, maybe they are safe in Europe, but this is the land of the Suburban, home of the Excursion. When you get hit, it won't be by another Smart Car...it will be by a FAT TRUCK!

Yes, it does keep up just fine. Having seen these (they're *everywhere*) in Switzerland, where the legal freeway speed is 75 mph and people often go at

80, they can keep up just fine, they're actually quite nimble. It's sort of the same argument, can a motorbike with a 500cc engine keep up with traffic? You bet it can. The lower weight makes the extra power unnecessary.

It primarily is, but if you look at many of the suburban types of driv> I can't imagine risking the safety of ANYONE in my family in one of

While I see your point, the logic is fundamentally flawed. I have a small car, you get a bigger car to be "safer" (thereby squashing me). Well, you know what, your neighbor gets an SUV and squashes you. And his neighbor gets a fat truck and squashes him, whereupon he gets squashed by the guy down the street with a hummer. This is the wrong direction to go. Keep it real. How much FAT TRUCK does one lone soul need? And yes, do look around, 90%+ of the cars/trucks you see at any given moment in time are occupied by a single person.

At the risk of being called a h*mo (happened before), here's my opinion:

- be real about what you need

- don't go down the route of the arms race in the 80's with your car

- switch to public transit where possible and carpool

- get off the friggin' cell and drive!

There needs to be an ideology switch from "bigger is better" to "small is beautiful". Otherwise, your kids won't have any oil left anymore to run their vehicles.

(/me still driving my '88 Civic that some pompous asses sneer upon as being a "tiny car" and a "death trap", when I'm not bicycling)

And oh, I forgot -

Considering there's no space for crumpling structures, these things have gone the other way and been designed as rigid cells. They actually hold up really well in crash tests, you'd be surprised!

you can chip em, and they'll hit about 120mph

designed, ye. suitible only for, no.

70mph is the standard speed limit on most euopean high speed roads, including the motorways of the UK where it was designed, i believe.

Don't believe what you might think about saftey either. the Us and EU differ in two ways, when it comes to car design. US has stricter emissions crap (got to love a country where the laws are made by lawyers based on who pays the most) whereas the EU has a much higher safety standard. Thus, the safety features that, stateside, you can only get in a saturn, it seems, have been standard in all EU cars for years.

Prices seem rather high, even considering that's Canadian dollars.