Smart cars

Smart Fortwo covered in Swarovski Crystals

What makes a a tiny car like the Smart Fortwo priceless? No, not the fact that it has a very low fuel consumption. It has nothing to do with that, but lots to do with the newest accessory glittering all over the little vehicle: Swarovski Crystals. Yes, they could have chosen a bigger car to cover in ice, but there’s a financial crisis in the world for goodness sakes. Any additional square footage would just be crazy!

The Smart Fortwo was created for the Chinese market. It gets no less than 283,960 eye-blinding Swarovskis on the exterior, plus a few on the interior, but who’s counting? In the interior, you will find these little stones applied on the leather, drink holders, shift knob, mirrors, seat buckles, and pedals.

The car was created by Anjuny Eyes China who has yet to unveil the asking price for the blinged out ride. Regardless of the price, however, there would be no amount of haggling that will bring it down enough for us to be able to afford it. And, come on, our money would be better off spent on a more reasonably sized car!

2010 Carlsson C25 Smart Fortwo Edition

Carlsson unveiled the C25 tuning kit for the Mercedes SL600 at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. Now that the first rollout of the Carlsson C25 took place on the Formula 1-track in Hockenheim, Carlsson has also prepared a C25 package for the Smart Fortwo.

The C25 Smart edition offers exclusive upholstery (same colors as the C25 bound with gray and orange), aluminum pedals, wheels and tires specific, a new line exhaust, and some elements of the traditional C25 body kit.

It is powered by a 84hp turbo engine or a choice of two naturally aspirated engine versions, delivering 61/71 bhp, respectively. The turbo engine is paired with a stainless-steel rear silencer with four polished exit pipes and the two naturally aspirated versions offer the silencer with an end-pipe only system.

Like with the C25 supercar, the Smart Edition will also be limited to 25 units. It will carry a price tag of 50,000 euro.

SMART Car founder Nicolas Hayek passes away

We hadn’t even had a chance to recover from the sad news of Spen King’s - aka the “Father of the Range Rover” - death when we found out that Nicholas Hayek, the man responsible for giving the auto world the Smart Car, has also passed away due to heart failure. He was 82 years old.

While most of us autophiles know him for his Smart Car, the rest of the world knows Hayek as the savvy businessman who built an affordable line of watches that has since come to be universally known as Swatch.

With an eye towards building products that the everyday man can afford, Hayek took the successful template he was using with Swatch to build a car that fits into the Swatch action plan: affordable, customizable, and most of all, customer-friendly.

With the help of Mercedes-Benz, who took the reigns from Volkswagen as a partner in the Smart Car program, Hayek was able to launch his pride and joy, and while the car hasn’t exactly been as successful – in terms of sales - as a lot of people initially thought, nobody can say that the Smart Car hasn’t made an impact on the world. This tremendous impact is evidenced by the immense popularity it now enjoys in the pop culture lexicon. And all of that came from a man who was only a relative neophyte in the industry and whose time there was unceremoniously cut short.

We can sit and debate the merits and demerits of the Smart Car, but one thing’s for sure, Nicholas Hayek, in his short time as an automaker, has made a lasting impact on the industry in more ways than one.

Rest in Peace, sir.

2010 Smart Fortwo ICE edition

UK customers have just received a new Smart Fortwo special edition. The new smart ICE will be available in striking deep black with black carbon fiber finish tridion safety cell. It was developed in cooperation to Pioneer and will be limited to only 200 units. Those 200 units will consist of 140 micro hybrid drive petrol versions priced from £10,495 on-the-road as well as 60 diesels, which will cost £11,245.

The special edition also gets a two-way speaker system and active subwoofer, a user-friendly touch-screen displays album artwork, and Pioneer’s innovative MusicSphere technology.

Its Navgate system also offers information about traffic jams and accidents as well as highlighting more than six million points of interest in 44 countries. Customers can also get a new ECO Graph package to analyze their driving performance.

Its black exterior is completed by 15" BRABUS Monoblock VII alloy wheels and panoramic roof. The interior will get black leather heated seats, leather optic upper dashboard and 3-spoke leather sports steering wheel with steering wheel gear shift.

Press release after the jump.

Smart prepares new Forfour

With BMW preparing its new Project i city car, we would expect Smart to react and provide us with a new model of their own. Enter the new Forfour model for 2014. The new model will be built along with Smart’s new partners, Renault and Nissan. Fortunately, we wo n;t have to wait that long for a new Smart ,model. The third-generation Fortwo will be revealed in 2012.

The 2014 Forfour will be built on a lengthened version of the Fortwo platform, the same one used for the next Twingo. The Fourfour will be a rear-wheel-drive model, measuring 3500mm in length and 1550mm in height.

Under the hood there will be a new range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, ranging from 1.2 to 1.8 liters. This new direct-injection petrol and common-rail diesel units will be used into a wide range of compact Mercedes, Nissan, Renault and Smart models. In both Smarts, the engines will be mated to a dual-clutch gearbox and will be offered in hybrid and plug-in electric drivetrain options.

These cars look kind of cool , but seem completely irrelevant in the car world. It seems that people should just start walking to places instead of taking these itty bitty cars out. We are not even convinced that these cars can be at all comnfortable.

New Styling Accessories for Smart Fortwo

Its time to prepare your Smart Fortwo for spring! Taking a page out of MINI’s book, Smart Fortwo is releasing a quirky new package for those who thinking that the vibrancy of spring should have more flavor infused into it. So, if you’re looking to spice up you Smart ForTwo, you can have your compact added with art stickers, Brabus interior contrast components in carbon look and Brabus LED daytime driving lights.

The Brabus components for the interior include trims and covers for the dashboard instruments, instrument cluster, steering-column stalk, door handles and centre console. Likewise, the LED lamps are available in chrome or in black. The stickers - ever the eye catchers that they are - come in blue, orange and white or vibrant red with stylistic elements in black, silver and white.

Press release after the jump.

2010 Smart Fortwo Sprinkle by Rolf Sachs

Smart took the "open your mind" slogan a step further with the unveiling of the Fortwo Sprinkle by Rolf Sachs at the Geneva Motor Show. If you don’t know who Rolf Sachs is, he is widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent minds in the world of creative design so it would have been pretty easy to expect that his prints would be all over this special edition Smart ForTwo.

And in some ways, it is.

The uniquely-designed Smart ForTwo is painted in white combined with seemingly random splashes of color. The creative play of colors even includes the white rims and the interior – because you know what they say among the chic circles: art knows no boundaries.

Press release after the jump.

2010 Smart Fortwo Edition Greystyle

The premium compact car builder Smart has added a new special edition version of the ForTwo called the Edition Greystyle. Specially designed for the spring to allow owners to enjoy the sun on their skin and the smell of fresh flowers after the long cold winter, it will be available in both coupe and cabrio variants and features an exclusive matte dark gray finish with bright yellow mirror caps to break up the monochromatic paint scheme that continues onto the six spoke alloys. The accent theme continues on the inside with trim pieces finished in gleaming yellow and matte chrome to highlight the leather wrapped surfaces like the seats and steering wheel, while the first are covered in top quality Nappa leather, just like on upscale Mercedes Benz models.

As far as power is concerned, the Smart Fortwo Edition Greystyle can be ordered with either a small displacement three cylinder with micro hybrid drive technology producing a total of 71 HP or a slightly more powerful 84 HP version. Adding a bit of speed and style to the traditional Smart car offering, the ForTwo Edition Greystyle will go on sale in the European market starting at €16,135.

Press release after the jump.

Smart Fortwo Electric Drive

Mercedes Benz’s city car operation has just unveiled the new Smart Fortwo Electric Drive and it will begin to appear in showrooms at the end of 2009. The second generation ultra compact is powered by a 30 kW electric motor that is powered by a highly efficient lithium ion battery pack. Like most battery electric vehicles the Smart EV can be topped off at any standard household outlet for around two Euro. A full charge enables the new Fortwo to travel up to 83 miles, more than enough for an around town commute and because of the Smart car’s compact nature it can easily maneuver through city traffic. The Smart Fortwo Electric Drive can accelerate from 0 to 60 km/h in 6.5 seconds and can hit a top speed of 100km/h, conversion to miles is not recomended.

Press release after the jump.

Brabus Ultimate High Voltage

The German tuning firm Brabus recently got together with the electric car builders at Tesla to produce a very special zero emissions Smart Fortwo. The Brabus Ultimate High Voltage is a high performance electric vehicle based on the popular city car from Mercedes Benz. The tuning house Brabus has a long history taking high end luxury cars to new heights with bold exterior treatments as well as extremely plush interiors, that is why Tesla Motors was included in order to give the all electric Smart Fortwo an extra jolt of adrenaline.

The Ultimate High Voltage is powered by a very special electric motor that was developed with the help of the American electric sports car maker that produces a maximum output of 82 HP and a peak of 207 lb-ft of torque which helps the 1,600 pound Smart sprint from 0 to 38.5 MPH in just 3.7 seconds and hit 60 MPH from a standstill in under 9.8 seconds.

The exterior of the Brabus Ultimate High Voltage is painted in a very unique shade of cream called matte Tridionzelle and features a few distinct touches like LED driving lights integrated into the front bumper as well as meaty Widestar fender flares and side skirts and a set of 18 inch split five spoke rims wearing transparent Plexiglas covers to get as much milage as possible from the electric Smart car.