So, apparently, someone in my hometown got a Smart car.
My Mom snapped this pic today and put it on her Facebook page.
You know what strikes me as odd about this pic (other than someone in New Martinsville, W.Va., having a Smart car)?
… You have all of that space to park that shoebox with wheels and you still can’t get it between the lines?
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I love parking Milo (my 2009 Grand Marquis) beside these little cars out in the suburbs of Philly. WHy would you purchase one of these when it gets no better gas mileage than a Ford Focus?
I think they have a place in urban areas like Center City, Old City, or Fishtown in Philly where the streets are narrow and parking is a premium, but most of these are sold out in the burbs in which is just an oxymoron.
I would want one, had I enough spare time and disposable cash, for the sole purpose of re-creating Carbug.
For any other purposes, though, I use my car to transport me, Mrs Small Berries, and our stuff. I have the feeling with a “smart car”, I would have room for no more than two of those.
Yeah, I have seen a few of these things cruising down I-79 – like between Morgantown and Clarksburg – seriously, the interstate, you know the one full of high speed traffic and tons of tractor trailers? I always expect to see Fred Flintstone driving…the thought of having multiple tractor trailers passing those cars is scary!
Yeah, CG is right … I see them around DC and it makes sense because if you live and work in town, it would be so awesome to have a car that small that you could fit in impossible places. If you live somewhere that requires extensive commuting, though, it escapes me why. There’s no way you survive a high-speed crash in that thing on the interstate. I just don’t see how it’s possible, and it’s freaky, like you said, Destini. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
JSB: LOVE Carbug! And I’m the same. I have too much stuff to cart around to pare down the mid-size sedan any further.
In theory, there’s a whole buncha space under the car that absorbs the impact in a crash. You end up sitting pretty high in one of these things. However, that brings up the whole issue of tippiness in heavy winds and high-speed avoidance maneuvers. Anybody remember the Suzuki Samurai?
These cars were designed in and for Western Europe, where city streets are even more of a tangled mess than they are here. It makes a good deal of sense there, but so do a lot of microcars that likely wouldn’t fare well in the U.S.
All that said, I know someone who owns one and she seems pretty happy with it. While I think it’s on the small side, I do notice that my two-door gets a lot less use whenever I’m hanging out with people, even if it does have seats for four. So it’s probably the perfect car if you want to never be the designated driver.
Also, is the Carbug fandom a sign that there may be more than one person not related to me that’s seen the show “Red Dwarf?” Though personally I preferred the first season or so, before the Starbug ever came up.
Imagine one of these cars down on the Tolsia Highway pulling out in front of an overloaded coal truck doing 15 MPH over the speed limit.
SPLAT!!!!
It would look like a giant insect splattered on the hood of a Mack.
Shut up, Lister! I’m a hollogram!
Notice how there’s oodles of room in the parking space to park multiples of smart cars, or, you know, park ONE correctly? It’s tiny and they parked like it’s a oldsmobile sedan.
I know. You could park a semi in that side lot, and they couldn’t get the SmartCar between the lines.
Looking closer at that picture, I now realize where my lost roller skate went.
We have a lot of these trolling around Miami. Jacque I’m with you. The first thing I noticed was the driver’s inability to park this thing in a wide open space. If you can’t get that tin can between the lines, you clearly should not be driving at all.
I’m just perplexed how you don’t stick the landing, so to speak, in a car the size of a go-cart in a wide open parking lot.
“Emergency. Emergency. There’s an emergency going on. … it’s still going on.”
Man, this post is more fun than the “scooter in its own space” one! I’m thinking this is a worse transgression, because at least with the scooter the ratio of people transported to spaces used is 1:1. At best, this Smart managed a ratio of 2:2, but chances are there was no passenger (1:2). That would make this Smart twice as bad.
OMG. I didn’t even realize it was parked that way. Hahahaha.