Smart


Started in 1994 by the Swiss watch manufacturer Swatch the Smart was meant to be a tiny car that could fit three in one parking space that is the size of a normal vehicle (by parking from the other direction of course) and to be extremely economical. The Acronym SMART stands for Swatch Mercedes ART, and the vehicles they produce are the products of an engineering idea that the vehicle should carry two human beings and a case of good beer. In the 90’s Mercedes-Benz studied the possibilities of building a super-sub compact car and looking into the idea of mass producing them at economical prices, later they teamed up with the Swatch group and thus the SMART car was born.

Smart Logo

Being a subsidiary of Daimler (formally the car company Daimler-Chrysler formally known as Daimler-Benz [formally known as Prince…/sarcasm]) it has the full technical backing and fiscal backing of the resource and development departments and of course the fiscal aspects.

With these resources at the disposal of the SMART project they have produced a product that is popular, with over 750k sold to date, and probably many more by the time of this writing. However, recent developments have come to light, starting two years ago with the Daimler Corporation deciding not to purchase more production room and then a year later in 2006 liquidating SMART assets and transferring them to another area in the auto grouping (the Mercedes and Benz areas).

Smart Tuning

Soon after Daimler canned the Forfour version of the vehicle and went into redesigning of the Fortwo models. Thus far the market share for these extremely small vehicles is quite wide, with Australia, Canada, and the USA being the major three areas. However in the USA several modifications had to be made, and the auto’s go through a third party most of the time, having 23 modifications on average to meet with the United State’s regulations regarding headlights, doors, odometers, and other minor safety issues. Currently the future for the Smart car is in the grey area.

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