2016 Smart ForTwo: First Drive - Yahoo Autos (blog)
Raise your hand if you know one person who owns a Smart. On the other hand, you probably know several people who drive Smart cars all the time, at least if you live in one of the dozen or so North American Car2Go cities. There are 350 in the fleet in Austin, where I live, and 550 in Portland, Oregon, where I tested the new Smart ForTwo last week. In a world of $2. 50 a gallon gas and balloon loans for luxury cars, there’s not going to be an explosion of personally-owned Smarts, no matter how much better — and it is way better — the new version might be than the old one. I don’t see the Honda Fit losing dominance or the Mini Cooper feeling threatened. Instead, what I saw and drove last week was less a preview of car ownership, and more a preview of car sharing. The Smart ForTwo is 8. 8 feet long, and has a three cylinder engine that churns 89 hp and 100 ft-lb of torque to a maximum speed of 96 MPH. That said, the previous Smart didn’t have power steering, power windows, or even a radio, and the new one has all those things, plus a Bluetooth alarm system, cruise control, the same crosswind assist system that Mercedes puts in its Sprinter... Source: www.yahoo.com
