40 ❚ SMART ❚
The innovative micro car is dead. Shame
A new Smart has just been launched, the #1. It’s the final nail in the coffin of the original Smart – the dream of Smart – because it’s a generic 2022 car. It’s the right car in the right place at the right time, and that was never what Smart was all about. Smart’s always been ahead of its time, or behind the times, or looking the wrong way.
The idea was Swatch founder Nicolas Hayek’s. He saw there was a cheaper, fresher, more practical way of doing things. Why not build a car that’s small enough to make urban driving fun and convenient? Why not make it electric? With changeable body panels? He worked on the idea with VW, until CEO Ferdinand Piëch said no.
So Hayek went to Mercedes – where visionary engineer Johann Tomforde had been doodling tiny cars for years, and thinking radical thoughts about how cars are made, sold and used. When the Smart project arrived, it all fell into place: it could form a semi-detached part of the family, sitting below the about-to-be-launched A-Class.
And for a while it worked. But by the time it made it into production the City Coupe had got wider, and the powertrain was conventional, and Tomforde had moved on. But at least some of his ideas about car use and ownership, and dealers, and collaborative produ
