Maybe many people drove it. Everyone (or almost everyone) certainly saw it. Maybe at the last minute, thinking there was parking and instead it was there, hidden among other cars. The smart fortwo has always “played” hide and seek in our cities, the protagonist of a mobility that did not exist before.
A car concentrated in one length less than 3 metersborn for cities and capable of conquering the hearts of millions of drivers. Especially in Italy. With Rome not only caput mundi but also caput smart. In fact, the Eternal City holds the record for smart fortwo registrations: more than 200,000. If you have ever driven around it, even just once, you understand why.
Goodbye and thank you
Now the story of the smart fortwo is coming to an end. Production lines stopped and the last examples delivered. The one for Italy ended up in Milan – with all due respect to Rome – in the hands of Gaia Pisani, the last italian customer to buy a new smart fortwo. From now on, if you want one, you will have to turn to the used market.
A piece of automotive history that is going away in the silence of the electric, waiting for an heir. The smart fortwo could in fact return. Only with batteries and with the ultra-compact dimensions we are used to. Work on the platform has begun, in the meantime partners are being sought with whom to share the costs of producing the series car.
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smart fortwo and Gaia Pisani, the last Italian buyer of the electric two-seater
smart fortwo, the history
And of course, you will say, what a discovery: among the brains that contributed to the birth of the smart there is the brilliant one of Nicolas Hayekwhich transformed the Swatch into a global phenomenon.
The reasoning is flawless, but transferring Hayek’s watch philosophy to a car is not so obvious, especially if your partner in the business is called Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) and by trade produces very rigorous cars, designed for those who, generally, would not go below an Omega chronograph; never mind Swatch. And yet, la fortwo (which at the beginning is only smart) seems to be the transposition on four wheels of the concepts of the 50,000 lire watches, this was their base price in the nineties.
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Of the Swatches, at least according to Hayek’s wishes, the car should also have the power supply: yes, the boss’s patron he would have wanted it electricbut the time was not yet ripe. It will be from 2020, when smart will produce only 100% battery-powered cars.
Tridion and colored plastic
We were saying about Mercedes: even though the city car currently being designed is destined to be born under another brand, the Germans are not willing to lower the bar even by a millimeter when it comes to safety. From this assumption, the car It is conceived around the Tridiona real super-shock-resistant skeleton, capable of providing an uncompromising level of occupant protection, despite its small size.
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The Tridion cell of the smart fortwo
Everything else is then “attached” to this survival cell, including the panels. plastic bodywork (body panel), in a wide variety of colors, in solid colors or in combinations of all kinds. The imagination runs free inside, too, where rounded vents, “satellite” instruments that emerge from the dashboard and colorful coverings brighten up traffic jams in the city.
And to think that Ferdinand Pièchall’epoca big boss del Volkswagen Grouphe says no, he prefers the Lupo, because he considers a 2-seater car too much of a risk. Yes, because before Daimler, Hayek and his men submit the project for the two-seater city car to VW (but also to BMW e Fiat), but they only find fertile ground in Stuttgart, where they have already been working on a city car for several years.
It is the classic example of right meeting at the right time, that between the managements of Daimler and Swatch: the rest It’s history, of success. Rome and the Romans, for example, fall in love with it. Yes, even the city seems to welcome a finally small machine, which removes all the superfluous and, what is there, colors it with joy. Result: still today, the capital of Italy is the #1 city in the world by number of fortwos sold.
It is the classic example of the right meeting at the right time, that between the managements of Daimler and Swatch: the rest It’s history, of success. Rome and the Romans, for example, fall in love with it.
Problematic start
Do you know the moose test? Yes, the one famous for having risked lame not the poor animal that lives in the cold, but the Mercedes A-Class. Well, it was him who made the Daimler management tremble for the second time in a short time when even the smart, in the fateful change of direction done at speed, it overturns.
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This time, not by the testers of the specialized magazines, but by the same testers of the company, who had doubts first, after having seen what happened, precisely, with the A-Class. Well, the smart sees postpone his debut on the market and, due to the additional investments required, Swatch withdraws from the joint venture SOFIREMbased in Hambach, France, and owned as follows: 38.3% by Daimler, 36.7% by SMH and 25% by the French state-owned company for the development of the region.
Almost 20 million lire
The corporate vicissitudes are resolved with Daimler who acquires the entire capitalwhile from a product point of view the smart was modified (wider tyres at the rear, stiffer set-up and ESP as standard) and presented in its definitive version at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Sales began on July 2nd of the following year and few people bet on the success of the smart, also thanks to a price from… Mercedes to scale: about 18 million lire. The history books say otherwise. To the delight of Daimler and all those who develop the “smart addiction”, that habit that takes hold of you from the first time you drive it in the city and you wonder why, until then, you had gone around with all the “superfluous” represented by the meter – at least – more of bodywork than the others.
The development of the range
Sales volumes exceeded the expectations of Daimler itself, which in 2003 was not satisfied with the usual restyling, but expanded the range to include roadsters and roadster coupés, as well as the first smart Brabus. In 2004, the smart forfour arrived, based on and powered by the Mitsubishi Colt and produced in Holland.
Roadster e forfour in reality they are not great successes; the production of the second one ends after only two years, when it is decided to concentrate the efforts on the second generation of fortwo, of 2007. In 2014 the third generation arrives, which is expanded again to the forfour, also thanks to the agreement with Renault, which on the basis of the forfour derives the Twingo.
The electric is coming
In the world, people are starting to talk about electric cars and these are starting to become more and more numerous. The fortwo had already tried to move on battery with the ED (acronym for Electric Drive), based on the second generation.
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Source: it.motor1.com