Smart Car vs. Suburban

[bjarvis]

Last May, while in Vancouver with kent4str, tdjohsn and rlegters, I saw a Smart Car for the first time. It's an amazingly compact bit of work. While I wasn't able to sit in it to judge fully, it struck me as being fairly roomy inside, at least more than I'd expect for such a tiny machine. I took some photos at the time, but the lighting in the garage sucked and I didn't have anything to show scale.

On Sunday, that changed.

As kent4str, cuyahogarvr, Woody and I left the Air & Space Museum in Dulles, VA, we saw another Smart Car, this one in the parking lot during daylight adjacent to a Suburban! What a comparison of scale!

	Smart Car vs. Suburban 01
	Smart Car vs. Suburban 02
	Smart Car vs. Suburban 03
	Smart Car vs. Suburban 05

I'm not sure I'd want to own one --kent4str probably wouldn't fit and there's no room for cargo-- but it's kinda neat.

Comments

The advantage to having a motorhead husband ...

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Randy tells me that the Smart Car was designed to be small enough to fit TWO of them into a standard parking space on a street ... at a 90 degree angle to "regular" size parallel parked cars. Mercedes Benz has been waffling on bringing the things into the U.S., because they're afraid of damaging their luxury cachet/reputation by being perceived as an "economy" car maker.

Considering that the Smart is evidently more than reasonably reliable, cheap, and gets very high mileage (nearly as good as a hybrid), it's an otherwise quite logical choice of vehicle.