Newly opened just next door to my local Hummer dealer is a Smart dealer. I am not making this up. The symbol of American vehicular excess now next door to the symbol of Euro frugality.
I wouldn't really call the Smart a symbol for Euro frugality. Granted, it was originally designed to be a "saves gas and thus is cheaper" model, but it isn't really cheap when you consider what it offers - not much, like NO storage space at all ... I always wonder who buys those cars. Can't even but a crate of water in the "trunk" , not to mention guitars :) And it costs about 12000 EUR - which, these days, is about 17500 USD. Cheap??? I think not ...
Well, yes, it manages, at least in the gasoline model we'll be able to get here, to burn more fuel than my four-door-plus-ample-trunk Prius, without even being cheap, either. You could park it in a tiny place, though generally in the US any place you could legally park you could fit one of those Hummers in, so that doesn't really matter, either. Still, whatever it is, it's about as different from a Hummer as can be. And we mostly can't get any of the cars you think of as Euro-frugal, so it's the best symbol we've got :)
Obviously the target market is people who want to put a Smart in the back of their Hummer.
In Germany, I was amused by the places in which Smart drivers would make U-turns. Er ... make that "drivers of Smarts." I'm not so sure they're smart drivers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 10:54 pm (UTC)In Germany, I was amused by the places in which Smart drivers would make U-turns. Er ... make that "drivers of Smarts." I'm not so sure they're smart drivers.