All Cars, All the Time

Driving the smart fortwo

As the "street smart" show rolled through the Bay Area I had a chance to take a spin behind the wheel of a fortwo. I'll warn you--the drive was brief, but at least it was on public streets and not some coned off parking lot.

We are working with a small amount of power, 71hp, and yet the economy of somewhere around 40mpg is nothing to write home about. However, I really don't think that power, economy or ultimate practicality are going to play that much of a factor here. Bottom line is that the first couple years of sales are going to be folks who fell in love with the fortwo based on its perky, unmistakable profile.

Going back to the test drive. The car is as spacious as you've read about: no worries about claustrophobia. The transmission does take its time in between shifts when in automatic mode, with a noticeable pause as it changes things up. With such a quick time behind the wheel I didn't get a chance to play around with the controls very much. I will say that everything I did touch inside the car fell easily into hand and I was off to the races relatively quickly.

So, how much is this little put-put going to set you back? Introductory pricing places the entry level fortwo pure at $11,600, passion coupe at $13,600 and passion cabrio at $16,600 before delivery costs. There will be options such as leather, heated seats, power steering plus those funky pod like clock and tachometer gauges.

I wish that my drive time in the car had been longer. However, as I said above I doubt that the throngs of folks lining up to check out the fortwo really cared much about how it drove as much as how they looked in it.

It's an appealing car and certainly looks like nothing else on our roads. I hope that the turbo model will come along to make things a bit more interesting!