Even before the Smart #1, Smart had lost its unique character

If you’re a regular on the road, chances are you’ll see a Smart #1 for the first time this year – if you haven’t already. The electric Smart marks a new beginning for the brand that first brightened up the streets 25 years ago. It’s an electric hatchback on Geely’s SEA2 platform, and certainly not as unique a product as the original Smart CityCoupé, but a new kind of car for the brand.

And that was also allowed, they must have thought at the Chinese Geely. In 2019, this took over 50 percent of the shares of the loss-making Smart from Daimler (parent company Mercedes-Benz) and breathed new life into the brand. Pick up where Smart left off at that moment? I didn’t. Smart’s product range left much to be desired and its novelty had worn off anyway. In fact, Smart had been a poor imitation of what it once was for years.

Never again what it was

Although the latest Smart ForTwo was still immediately recognizable as a Smart, it was nowhere near as small and as ‘own’ as its (first) predecessor. Not even in a literal sense: the third and last generation Smart ForTwo (and four-door brother ForFour) was the result of a collaboration with Renault, which designed its Twingo on the same architecture. Partly because of this, the Smart ForTwo of the third generation moved closer to cars of ‘normal’ dimensions.

The original Smart CityCoupé: only 2.54 meters long and as wide as it is high.

How different was it with the original Smart, which still bore the CityCoupé name? It hit the market in 1998, coincidentally the same year technology company Apple launched its iconic iMac G3. That product, like the Smart, had a unique design – they even differ somewhat in terms of color and shape – and also (successfully) tried something new: the small Apple had to connect the general public to the internet, where the Smart the ultimate small car for the big city.

And small, that was the CityCoupé. With a length of 2.54 meters you could put it decently perpendicular to a parking space, while the width of 1.51 meters and the height of 1.5 meters were also downright modest. With an almost equal height and width and doors that covered almost the entire side, the CityCoupé even had a nice squat appearance, but as a passenger you were also aware of that. You could lose it anywhere; you could hardly put anything in it. This was a two-person car with room for two suitcases behind the two seats – and nothing more. Practical? Yes and no. Unique? Certainly, especially at that time.

The second Smart ForTwo is a sweet 20 centimeters longer than the first.

Growing pains

The CityCoupé, which changed its name in 2004 and was now called ForTwo, became a success. And that deserved follow-up, but the second (launched 2007) became less uncompromising than the original. In length it grew by almost 20 centimeters and in width by 6 centimeters. The third ForTwo (launched in 2014) managed to keep to the size of the second in terms of length, but – presumably due to platform sharing with Renault – became more than 10 (!) centimeters wider again.

In the Netherlands, the third Smart ForTwo has only been for sale as an EV since 2019 – a variant that was introduced in 2017 – and as such it only recently disappeared from the market. Until that year, the ForTwo was still doing quite well in our country, as the third generation from 2015 to 2018 accounted for at least 1,500 sales per year – a lot more than the generation before. The step to only EVs did not help Smart in the Netherlands: the brand sold 413 in 2019, after which it quickly became (even) less.

The Smart ForTwo was not a success in the Netherlands as an electric car.

It creates quite a contrast to how the original CityCoupé fared. Although it was a niche car – and one that was plagued by reliability problems – it did create its own niche in the market. 1999 was the first full year in which the car was sold, and in that year more than 2,600 units received a Dutch license plate. In almost every year after that, the number of registrations remained around 2,000 units or higher, until 2007 when it was the turn of the second generation. It never reached 1,000 copies in a single year. The third then made up for something, but no ForTwo came close to the success and uniqueness of the CityCoupé. Perhaps the #1 can approach success.

What do you think, is the Smart #1 a worthy follow-up for the once so ‘own’ brand?

Bonus: the other Smarts

The CityCoupé or ForTwo may well be the Smart; the brand produced even more. For example, the two-seaters also came in various generations as convertibles – both with a removable roof panel and with a fabric roof – and there was even the Crossblade: a Smart without windscreen, doors and roof, of which only 2,000 were built. There was also the Dutch-built and Mitsubishi Colt-based ForFour of the first generation (2004 to 2006), which was succeeded in 2014 by the Twingo-based ForFour. Finally, the brand also carried the Roadster and Roadster Coupé for a few years (2002 to 2005); two mini sports cars with largely the same technology as the original two-person Smart. However, that also meant that they had the same technical defects, so that production was stopped quite quickly …

It never got more unique than the Crossblade.

The Smart Roadster: a small sports car with compact Smart technology.