Undercooked #1 electric crossover introduced the brand reimagined under Geely. Now for the larger, coupé-styled one
MATT SAUNDERS @thedarkstormy1
TESTED 28.11.23, MALLORCA, SPAIN ON SALE SPRING 2024 PRICE £39,950
Handsome though it may be, the Smart #3 is a car that makes people wonder just what its reimagined maker is really all about.
If you’d have asked me a few hours ago, while I was still at the wheel, I’d have been none the wiser. But now, with the benefit of a little detached perspective, it’s becoming clearer what direction ‘the new Smart’ – the brand as refounded in 2019 and co-funded by Mercedes-Benz and Chinese giant Geely – is headed off in.
Clearly, this is no longer the maker of innovative microcars that it once was. Still, if you were on a mission to show the world that you’re the same fearless old purveyor of arguably the most bold and singular small car of the last half century, this just isn’t what you’d do.
We might let them off the decision to kick-start the revival of the brand with an electric compact crossover, the #1. Sooner or later, they will need to sell some cars, after all. But to move next to a larger, lower, more expensive and more desirable mid-sized coupé-crossover like the #3 – a rival for anything from the Polestar 2 to the Volvo C40 Recharge, the Tesla Model 3 and even the Cupra Born – hardly says ‘I’m innovative’, does it? It hardly says ‘pick me, I’m different’. Right now, where mid-sized EVs are concerned, I’m not sure that we even know what different looks like – but this certainly isn’t it.
What the #3 actually reveals is that Smart’s future products are likely to be more mainstream, conventional – imitative, even – than those of its past. When challenged on the topic, insiders suggest this is because the culture of 50% of the company now “has a hard time being creative”.
“In China,” one senior former Mercedes employee told me, “imitating your rivals is how you show you’re competitive. It’s not frowned upon to ape the same styling, technology or positioning of another car. It’s encouraged.”
You could call that a simplistic way to explain why the car we’re looking at here so plainly blends lots of design cues from existing EVs; patronising, dismissive, a tad xenophobic even. Yet here we are.
The #3 seems to take bits of inspiration from hither and yon, massaging them together into a car that’s quite pretty and plays the added-style hatch effectively enough.
