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To say nothing of having everyone look at you, but for all the wrong reasons :shades:
Well if the 1/2 car gets better gas mileage and 1/2 the car is all I need why not? Again if I use it for a commuter car (and use the wifes bigger car for other things) why do I need seating for 4 and room for a weeks worth of groceries?
To say nothing of having everyone look at you, but for all the wrong reasons
I never gave a #$@% what others thought.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
The Smart (if you've ever seen one in real life) looks like a FREAK on the streets---it's very weird and very VERY small in relation to other cars. Next to a motorcycle or a 5-year old child, no, but next to a Fit it looks like a loaf of bread. Well, I'm exaggerating but you know what I mean.
The few times I've seen a FIT on the street, it looks shocking to me, because it looks like an HO scale minivan! :P When I see the occasional Yaris though, they don't look that obscenely small. At a quick glance they make me think of a slightly smaller Corolla that got formal-ed up a bit.
Parking this baby and navigating America's vast comparative downtowns will indeed be a breeze in this micro-car from Brazil. Stay tuned.
BTW-does Nissan pass on bringing their little Micra microcar 4-door to the States because of emissions standards or do they just feel that the car is too unsubstantial for the American market? It's not coming over here.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Maybe one gadget freak in 100,000 buyers.....
The rest is pure profiteering. It's not nearly as expensive as peolpe think.
I went to Mexico's site - $13,600 including 15% VAT. This is the midrange model. Sort of like a Civic EX is.
$16,700(CAD) in Canada with their import fees tacked on. They also only sell the midrange model/bigger engine one.
1,543,500 Yen in Japan. That's including a massive import fee for Japan - something approaching 33%. It's the base model, though. Before the tarriffs it is just above $9000. Now, that is the ultra-small engine K-car model, but it's not a pricey car by any means.
Germany has them starting at 9450 Euros. $12,127 at current conversion rates. That's the colosest to a U.S. price that we'll find, since we also won't face any import tarriffs.
Not $20,000. Not even $15,000.
With only 3-lug wheels, the SMART would clean up. :P
Rocky
BTW-there is now an Obvio! 828E being built that will be electrical-powered and will also enable the owner of the 828E to recharge their Obvio! This new 828E will retail for US$49,000. Oh, the choices!
None of them even come close to taking up a full parking slot. Can we institute a tax break for not taking up much room on the interstates or at Target or WalMart parking spots?
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Smart has been selling in canada for quite a while. Its popular in densely packed cities like Toronto, Montreal and vancouver. Typical buyer is core downtown highrise condo resident.
BTW, There are many people who consider smart as a good deal. Gas consumption aside, for single 30 something guys/gals, this is a heck of a better alternative than a motor bike which can cost twice this amount. Bikes dont work in winter so they are useless anyways since winter is like 10 months in canada. :P
But if you putt around the city and have underground parking, this type of car might work for you. In that environment, it makes sense....but only that environment.
Personally if I took a cab twice a day in New York, it would be cheaper than buying and insuring and parking a $14,000 car per year. (I'm figuring $275/mo financing + $125 month insurance and FREE parking, which may not be the case).
I rode in cabs daily when we visited NYC for a week back in 2004, after that, the Roller Coasters at SixFlags weren't all the scary or thrilling. Driving on a sidewalk at 30 MPH, pulling out in front of City Buses, and Having a Crown Vic in a spot the size of a Yairs; now THAT'S scary. I was never so happy to see Birmingham, AL traffic and drivers as I was after that trip and those cab rides!
the company i used to work for sent people to a convention in birmingham. they were told, under no circumstances leave the hotel after dark. it's not a perfect world.
I wonder which hotel they visited (and when/what year?)... the part of town they were in could very well determine their safety. I live in a suburb of B'ham (very safe, community of about 10,000 people - a Mayberry of sorts), but would have no problem walking around Five-Points South in downtown B'ham. Taking a stroll near the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Complex/Convention Center would be a different story though!
Not a perfect world, indeed.
When I switched from a big V8 car to a small-engined Scion, the difference was about $1000 a year.
Again, it's not MPG, its GALLONAGE that counts. So going from 16 mpg to 36 mpg has a much larger financial impact than going from 40 to 55 mpg.
However, the Prius is not justifiable on MPG alone--it relies on "feel-good marketing" PLUS a very versatile platform of comfort and space.
The SMART may or may not catch a ride on "feel-good", and as a hauler of people and cargo it's pretty useless.
NYC -- I think a tiny Smart car would do well in NYC traffic, but it's not going to get that great MPG in the city, because it is not hybrid technology. It's going to crawl through traffic in first gear just like every other gas powered car.
Even in this forum we skirt the sub compact issue by assigning sub compact to cars that are in the Compact or slightly bigger class. Maybe because with the exception of the Mini there are no real sub compacts being offered? From what I have read, on the planned Smart car introduction to the US, a new bigger smart will be offered. If that turns out to be true then even the manufacturer must feel the Americans have a size issue with many of the currently produced sub compacts.
Saying these cars work in Europe and Asia doesn't matter much either. Scooters and Motorbikes work well in europe as well. You don't see our city traffic swarming with those gas saving devices in our cities. Not even in our warmer southern states.
The way I see it, of course Smart will have to offer Americans larger cars, unless they will be content with a "fringe" market of people who buy electric bicycles and solar powered baseball caps.
And, when they do that, they are going to run smack into the Japanese and Koreans, who we know rule in the subcompact class. The MINI avoided the Japanese by offering an expensive and high-content small car and maybe Smart can do that---go head to head with MINI and just stay away from the under $18K class. I know I would.
There's just more $$$ to be had with larger, more expensive, cars/trucks. I'm not talking dealership to customer, I'm talking manufacturer to dealer (which is what drives the stock).
GM and Ford's "legacy" (retirement/benefits) plans add somewhere (and forgive me if it's off a little) around $3000 to the cost of making a new vehicle before they even START.
So when you figure a $14000 or under car into the equation, you can guess why they don't see much "hope" for the American public to "want" them.
I saw once that it costs Ford almost 30% more to produce the Focus than it does for Toyota to produce the Corolla (quality debate aside) equipment being equal.
And that's in the already slim profit-margined "compact" arena... it gets slimmer as prices go down.
T
ABS and side airbags? Sure.
A/C and all the goodies? You betcha.
Nice stereo? Yep - even has a CD.
$12K price. And it crash-tests better than the Mini over in Europe, so what's not to like?
You can even replace the major panels in an hour or so - to change the color of it.
The problem with the importing has been getting the cars up to US specifications, both in smog and safety. You can talk about how congested freeways are in Europe and Japan, but there's probably also less of a disparity in the size of vehicles on the road. The average European or Japanese driver has a lot less worry about being run over by an Escalade-driving person on a cell phone than the average US driver does.
VW has taken heat for its commercial showing a driver walking away from an accident (or whatever it was), but that's the kind of factor they're going to have to push; the fact that it may be a small car, but it's safety-engineered like a NASCAR car. The car may be totaled, but the people will be safe.
Price isn't nearly going to be the barrier to acceptance that perception of safety is.
So would most people demote themselves to a rather homely roller skate in order to save $400 a year in gas? Seems like a lot to ask.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
me: Well I'm sure we all know a lot of people of different income and wealth amounts. My personal observation and I think what would be logical is that the more money you have or earn, the more likely you are to be a new-car buyer rather than a used-car. It is the new- car buyer that determines what gets built and sold.
Now if I'm the typical new-car buyer plunking down $25K, an extra $500/year isn't going to matter much to a person. I think the savings in the purchase price a small vehicle would be an incentive - say saving $10K. But today people have the option of saving $10K or more by buying a small vehicle. A couple of people I know, who have no kids at home, have a used Escalade and are adding a new Mercury Mountaineer. They want the comfort, luxury, safety of a larger vehicle, and are willing to pay for it.
I certainly would consider buying a small car; but then again a 2,500 Lb car isn't going to be very safe if in an accident with the prevalent 4,000 Lb cars on the road. If you have the money buy the Volvo, Impala, or other large car.
The closest car to it is the Fit, at close to $14K. And the micro-cedes Smart has all of the goodies - and better mileage as well. It's also just as safe as any small car, thanks to literally crazy amounts of engineering as only MB can manage. One of the two models used in testing in California a few years back was a guy in my old town, so I saw it for the better part of a year running around town. I even got to lok inside it and looking back on it, it has the exact same feel and finish as a Mini does. Anything but tin-can, and very cool. Just seats two people only.
People will buy it in droves. It's like a mega-Goldwing. An air conditioned, stereo equipped little personal transportation pod with all the safety features GM still don't have on some of their 20K models.
Financially, it seems to me that the car is a proven failure so far. DC has incurred massive losses on the Smart, and has recently decided to cut down the number of models. The car flopped in Israel, for instance, and has been pulled out of that market...
Maybe if they had some kind of hybrid Smart in a 4-door that could get 85-100mpg, that might work for them.
Geez, look at Prius. They sold...what...a quarter-million of them so far without spending a penny in direct-marketing....
I just don't think Smart "has it right yet". Maybe there's a way....
Agreed. I have been at several car shows where there have been Smarts. Everyone wants to look at it and jump in it. It is high on the curiosity factor.
Most people like the idea but are not willing to consider a car that small.
Get 80 mpg, and I am interested. Even a two door, two seater.
IIRC the diesels get about 63 highway and 51 city.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
There is a saying when we take in a car like an Aztec at our dealership: "There's a butt for every seat".
While I agree that there IS a market for the Smart, the OVERWHELMING population just won't care how "Mercedes" it is. The fact is, while there's a butt for the seat (heck, I'd drive one!), it is going to fail... it already is for that matter.
The reason the Prius sells so well is that it has acheived "yuppy" status to an extent (what with all the environmental and celebrity support), and I STILL want to stress that in my personal experience selling over 100 of the darned things in my career, people are MORE excited about the environmental/exclusivity/coolness/tax savings factors than they ever are about the gas mileage.
Heck, my co-worker owns one and in real-life driving is only gettinga bout 5-10 more MPG than my Yaris (add THAT up considering she paid 10k plus MORE).
In the end, I truly believe Americans will SLOWLY shift to smaller/more effiecient cars.
We aren't quite ready for the Smart yet.
T
The Smart offers you....smallness....that's about it....do you NEED smallness? If not, then you won't buy it over a VW TDI or a Prius, no way.
And this hoopla about "parking"...you know that downtown garage is going to charge you for a CAR regardless if it's a Smart or a Lexus LS430. Yep, they might let you park on the curb in Paris but Paris isn't America and your Smart will go to the Pound 'round these parts.
However, I will say that people were slow to jump on the Prius bandwagon as well. With the Smart it's a case of needing to start somewhere.
I wonder how the speed and handling tests will come out. I read that it's going to have a limiter at 85mph, but whether that means that it's the top speed you can easily get, or whether they're just setting an artificial cap, is a factor as well.
Because if it's a tiny car that can't accelerate onto a freeway, that's going to be another reason for people to avoid it.
In DC there is a lot of parking at the curb, where the spaces aren't clearly delineated. Non-metered parking in residential areas and such. As a result, as people park their cars, and some cars get moved and others don't, inevitably gaps get formed that bigger cars have to pass up. Occasionally I have seen spaces that something truly tiny like a Smart might fit into, that something bigger like a Yaris or Fit might not.
Even at my old condo, there was a lot of parking out on the street, and you'd have these buffoons store boats and tent trailers and other stuff out there. Inevitably you'd get these same gaps, where you could fit something like a Smart in there, but not anything bigger. Of course, I could just take my pickup and thoughtfully rearrange things from time to time :P
It offers better gas mileage. Look at it this way, do you need all the extra room? If not why get the VW TDI or Prius?
At the risk of repeating myself I rarely drive my daily drive with a passenger and I can't remember when anyone sat in the back seat. That with the fact that I rarely, if ever, cary more cargo than will fit in a Smart why in the world would I need something bigger?
That being said if they bring in a diesel powered Smart at prices equal to or less than a decent small car I would surely look into one for my daily drive.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Funny thing is half the time I accelerate onto the freeway (or tollway take your pick) its a top speed of 45 MPH or less.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D