December 31, 2007...3:23 pm
It’s Smart
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People keep laughing at me when I tell them I may make my next car a Smart car.
But I test drove one a few months back for the paper and actually liked it. GQ gave it a spin this month and came away impressed as well.
The fact that they get an estimated 40/city and 45/highway is a huge draw — but they’re also attractive (and attractively priced — the convertible model is $16K), comfortable (believe it or not) and fun to drive.
I got mine up to 60 mph on the test drive — but the GQ writer got on the highway and went up to 80 for over an hour. I don’t remember the last time I needed to go faster than 90 mph, which is the Smart’s top speed — so I’m not sure what the downside of owning one of these would be.
2 Comments
January 1, 2008 at 8:56 am
Some toyota cars (the echo, for example) got 40 mpg highway, and they had the added bonus of not looking silly
January 1, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I don’t think that the Smart fortwo looks any sillier than the Mini, or the VW Beetle. I think we’ve just become used to how those cars look and so we now think they’re “distinctive” rather than silly.
I’ve got nothing against a Toyota, really — I have friends who’ve driven them for more than a decade with no real trouble. But I think a lot of them (the Echo particularly) are sort of boring looking — and they usually come with nearly no standard features.
I’ve got no problem driving something odd looking that I love.
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