Letters to the Editor
-
Yay for small cars--but...
"In every place, at any time of day, I found a spot, usually several, often within five minutes. The spaces were certainly odd -- little scraps of pavement between garages, in otherwise unparkable corners jammed up against hydrants -- but they were all legal. And I had one of the only cars in the city that could fit in these out-of-the-way areas."
Riiiight. And the reason these tiny spaces were available?
Cause you had an unusually tiny car.
Once Smart cars become more common, even just a little more common, those scraps of parking will disappear forever. Goodbye advantage.
And 33 MPG is not going to cut it. I got 28 MPG in my Suburu Legacy station wagon, with all wheel drive and the ability to tow a thousand pound trailor. 'Course, I drive a 5-speed manual. Automatics, to put it kindly, suck eggs. I assume the Smart is also available with a manual?
A rollerskate like the Smart Car is going to have a hard time competing with regular small cars that get similar mileage. One problem with being nice and high up in the Smart Car is that you are pushing the same wind profile as a regular car, just with 3 feet cut off the end.
I'd rather spend my money on a plug-in electric with a 50 mile range as a second family car. A temporary parking advantage isn't good enough for me.
-
Mini
Forget the Smart - Buy a MINI. My clubman gets 40 mpg, has a lot more room and is fun to drive.........
-
@Ken, smart spaces
You could be right, the advantage may be only temporary. But maybe not: If people generally replace their big cars with smaller cars, you'll have more parking in the city, right?
-
So let's review
It rides like crap, it's underpowered, it has a crap transmission (why on earth are you shifting an auto anyway???), it's missing a seat and it gets the same mileage as my 4 door Camry.
But it's cute as fuck, a nerd chick magnet and you can park it.
So in short - the greatest benefit of the Smart car is when you're not using it and it's not running.
Awesome.
-
Good idea, bad execution
Everything I've read about the Smart says the same thing. Weak engine, lousy transmission, jerky ride, mediocre gas mileage considering its size.
Just because a car is small doesn't mean it has to perform as poorly as the Smart Car. Some company needs to take the concept, put a decent engine-transmission combination in it that is frugal with gas and try again. There's no reason a car its size shouldn't be able to routinely get in the 40s or even 50s if designed well.
-
Don't hate me cause I'm negative!
"If people generally replace their big cars with smaller cars, you'll have more parking in the city, right?"
And if there is more parking in the city, the 'tards will quickly buy bigger cars to take advantage of it!
Good point about overall urban efficiency however. There just needs to be some mechanism to rewards folks who drive such small cars. How about 1/2 parking spaces? Fit your Smart-sized vehicle into a half-space, pay half the parking fee (or fine, if you forget to feed the meter). Use a full-size car? Pay double!
Seriously, I wonder what a well-sprung and manual transmission Smart might be like. I remember when the VW Rabbit debuted. It was a small car, but pretty hot and it got 40MPG. I remember one of my schoolmates doing front wheel drive burning rubber donuts in the school parking lot with one of those. Very impressive.
-
Child Seats?
I'm not a parent, so maybe I'm not up on the latest info, but I thought child seats were never, ever, ever supposed to go in the front seat of a car.
-
Revolutionary?
Since when is consumption revolutionary? You want revolutionary: how about suggesting that, instead of buying a new internal-combustion car, however cheap it is compared to other cars, people drive less until electric cars come out in the next 2-3 years. Not consuming: now there's a revolutionary that doesn't really cost anything.
-
Yaris/Vitz 1.0
Thanks.
Yes, the Smart Car is smaller than the Toyota Yaris, which is still small. There is a not-U.S. Yaris called the Vitz that's a 3 cylinder 1.0 liter version that apparently gets 55 to 60 miles per gallon. It's supposed to have gotten an award as the best mileage non-hybrid vehicle in Japan.
It should run about $10,000. It's safer than the Smart Car.
I don't know if they'd sell like hot cakes here, but they would not compete directly with the Prius and so should be worth Toyota's while. And it wouldn't need re-working to pass muster as an American vehicle. We need it here.
Please report more to us on this car and what needs to be done for Toyota to bring it here.
Best -
-
Nice Job, Farhad
It's so good to see that Salon has fallen to the point that they publish a piece that is written by somebody who is totally out of his element, and manages to pass on a lot of really bad information.
As an auto/motorcycle journalist I have to tell you mate, this car is a joke. For the money there are an amazing assortment of cars that get as good or better mileage, and are light years more practical. Oh, and while I'm at it, how dare you tell people that they have to shell out at least 25K for a Prius and wait for months? This may be true in your neighborhood, but don't say such crap in a national publication for it isn't true for the country as a whole. And for those interested in emissions, this thing is a poop on a stick compared with the likes of the Ford Focus or the Fit or Yaris that you mentioned. But what pisses me off more than anything is for the price you could grab a brace of decent scooters, and use half the fuel and really park anywhere in San Fran.
Thanks, Salon, for giving your readers wonderfully misleading info because Smart gave Farhad a car for a week. Brilliant. What we need more on the web, in print and talk radio (have you heard the praise of the Tahoe Hybrid?) is absolute noongs telling people how neat something is when they know nothing about the genre.