America gets Smart

The tiny Smart ForTwo is finally available in the United States, and it looks like a hit:

Roger Penske, the CEO of the company's namesake and the sole importer of the smart brand into the U.S., says that with demand at its current level, dealers could offload 40,000 fortwos to customers this year. The only problem: the U.S. market is only getting 25,000.

Penske is currently talking with Mercedes-Benz, smart's parent company, to see if it can ship more fortwos Stateside in the coming months, but that looks unlikely considering that the smart factory is running at full bore for the year.

The Smart car is an innovative attention-grabber. (Here in Halifax, many Fortwos are being used to promote businesses.) Its fuel economy still can't match the hybrids, however, and there are several small cars with excellent fuel efficiency and much more room at a lower price. As an Autoblog commenter notes, Penske should remember what happened with the PT Cruiser, which was considered a huge hit when they were still relatively hard to find.

Damian P.

Update: there's at least one going around Halifax (promoting a property developer) with one of these on the back window.

Posted by damian at March 28, 2008 07:28 AM