Smart fortwo car is up on the main page!

Be sure to check out the latest car review on the www.dadsworld.com home page.  The Smart fortwo car certainly is cute, and incredibly small.  I have seen a few driving around in my town, and a friend of mine recently got one.  I am going to drive it soon to get an accurate impression.  It just looks so darn small, I worry about being protected in a collision.  Image is the obvious reason to buy one, and they are pretty neat looking.  But I am disappointed at the efficiency of the little car.  I was really hoping it would get 60mpg or better, but it does not.

So the Smart fortwo car by Mercedes gets 33/40 mpg.  I guess that’s respectable, like the article says, but I remember my very first car, a used 1981 Honda civic 1600 DX.  It averaged over 40mpg back then!  Surely 27 years later we should be able to come up with a car that doubles the mileage right?  Heck, a full size Toyota Camry gets nearly that good of mileage, and the much larger Prius (the favorite for greenies around here) gets better than that.  In Europe, there are more than one car (diesel’s, by the way) that get over 70 mpg.  One particular Peugeot gets over 80 mpg!  But they don’t meet U.S. road safety  criteria.  Go figure.

I will save my overall analysis until I drive it, which should be soon.  Until then, it looks cool but is worryingly small.  The United States has a much higher percentage of trucks and SUV’s than other countries (Europe, for example has much smaller cars and narrower roads), so even though small, economic and efficient cars work well over there, I doubt they will fit into American’s lifestyles.  I am a skeptic as to whether or not these Smart fortwo cars will be anything more than a fad.  Time will tell.

Until then, read the review and draw your own conclusions.

Tags: diesel cars, europe, fuel economy, mercedes, mileage, mpg, smart fortwo, united states