Smart car safe?

Hey, you're in BC! Nice. The weather really doesn't lend itself to bikes when it's wet, though.

Which leads me that think that "tight" is relative. I remember way back, driving up from the US to visit my sister in Vancouver in an old Gran Torino. After the US, the roads suddenly felt very narrow. I'm not sure that was just the perception on my part, but I promptly borrowed her hyundai to explore places like Chinatown, and felt much more at ease after that.

ws

fourth picture on here is me cruising gently in a Smart.

"cp" haute in die Tasten:

For those who have more to move, smart makes the four door four seat smart forfour.

IMHO two good seats serve me better than two tiny seats and one rear seat where nobody can sit because I have put back my seat as far as possible.

Frank

Which is where the LWB W168 A class and the 5 door new shape ones come into play - small car with clever interior design giving lots of space for passengers.

In Canada we only have the fortwo, quite a bit of them too. Personally, if I had the choice between a forfour and a Toyota Echo/Yaris/Rits hatchback I'd take the Toyota, bigger and cheaper.

cp

it's wet, though.

Tell me about, though today it was quite warm, got some work done in my friend's benz restoring shop.

driving up from the US to visit my sister in Vancouver in

sure that was just the perception on my part, but I

more at ease after that.

hmmmm, I haven't noticed and difference in width, though I have noticed that in some US cities, especially in the north, an offroad vehicle would be more fitting.

cp

THE point for the Smart fortwo is it's shortness:

2500 mm, the very best on the whole car market in terms of parking space (leaving _light_ cars as French Ligier etc. pp. out here).

Of course anything else is not as good as with other modern vehicles of the same price class - the fortwo is pricey and take in mind DaimlerChrysler loses(!) money with every one sold... - but given its shortness it competes well.

Juergen

THE point for the Smart fortwo is it's shortness:

2500 mm, the very best on the whole car market in terms of parking space (leaving _light_ cars such as the French Ligiers etc. pp. out here).

Of course anything else is not as good as with other modern vehicles of the same price class: No rear doors, no rear seats, short wheelbase, narrow wheel track, lack of crumple zones etc. - but given its shortness it competes well (IMHO).

Juergen

Oh I understand. I was just saying that the forfour is pointless to buy. Anyways, how's Hamburg? Ah, der bier is very good there :-)

cp

Why would a 2 seat car need rear doors?

Personally I wonder why Smart sells so few forfours - not many to be seen on the streets here in Germany (compared to other cars in that price segment).

Juergen P.S.: Beer? What's beer? I only drink tea... ;-)))

Of course a 2 seater doesn't need rear doors (although the BMW 1-series has... ;-) ), but other cars in the very same price segment as the Smart fortwo do have things the fortwo does not have, e.g. rear seats or rear doors (which some of the four-door cars from the Smart fortwo price segment do offer) so these cars do offer more than the fortwo in the same price segment.

price-segment Juergen ;-)

Of course, if I had followed the given link earlier I would have known the origin of your moniker/signature & quote therein.

However, last night we started watching one of two "Best of Monty Python" tapes the wife picked up cheaply the other day and there it was, the Spanish Inquisition sketch. Although I had seen many of the episodes first time round and many of them later, I did not remember this one...

Anyway, Trouble at th' mill (or trouble at mill as in script) is hard to reproduce in writing...

I am hoping the parrot sketch is in there, somewhere.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling

"Juergen ." haute in die Tasten:

I don't. The Smart forfour is based on the Mitsubishi Colt platform and it is a very usual microcar, which you can buy from many different brands. I have testdriven both smart fortwo and forfour. The smart fortwo really _is_ completely different to almost any other car on the market, the forfour only tries to build up the impression of being different. If you take this into consideration, the forfour does not offer any unique advantages before cars like the Toyota Yaris, Citroen C3, Skoda Fabia and Ford Fiesta. But these are substantially cheaper.

(Why did I try the forfour? Because smart germany launched a PR camapign where they offered 25 euros to everyone who volunteered to try a smart for half an hour;-))

Frank

It's too big for its size :-) might as well get something else

:-) Ja, I trink too much tea myself

cp

My point exactly.

cp

And better.

Except one point which is THE reason for many to buy the fortwo: It's shortness (2500 mm).

If you live in areas with _very_ limited parking space the fortwo beats them all (in that respect).

Juergen

Martin J was comparing the Fourfour with Toyota et al. And that is not quite so short.

DAS

For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling