Base Price: $12,235
If time is money, then time spent hunting for a parking space—20 minutes if you live in New York, 45 minutes if you live in San Francisco—will make the Smart Fortwo your best financial asset. Parking spaces that seem impossibly small aren’t. That sliver of macadam between the H2’s hitch and the crosswalk? The Smart will fit.
Smart-aleck “Where’s the other half?” comments do point out the capacitive limitations of the Smart: With eight cubic feet of cargo space, there will be no Costco runs in the Fortwo (although a jaunt through the store for drive-up food sampling would be fun and feasible). As light traffic in many carpool lanes indicates, the Smart would however very well meet most commuters’ needs. For driver and passenger, space abounds: The Fortwo features just slightly less head- and legroom than the gargantuan Mercedes-Benz GL.
A Lilliputian footprint, a subton curb weight, and a tiny engine should promise stellar fuel mileage, but the Smart does not deliver. We got 32 mpg in mixed driving. Unexceptional mileage might be excused if there were spirited performance to be had, but indeed, the Fortwo is the slowest-accelerating passenger car sold in this country, obliterating the quarter-mile in a tick under 20 seconds. Europeans and Canadians can buy the won’t-pass-U.S.-emissions diesel Fortwo that returns over 70 mpg on the Euro highway cycle. We hope the reliability issues that plagued the first generation’s turbocharged drivetrains were obviated by fitment of the larger, naturally aspirated 70-hp, 1.0-liter engine
No comments:
Post a Comment