2008 Smart Fortwo: Fashion = Money

There's used one on the lot in Santa Monica for $28K...
(I think it's the BMW dealership but I'm not sure)

New Spacious Honda Fit for the win!

Wait til the Ford Fiesta comes. Oooh this little bugger is in trouble!

I don't get why Edmunds thinks 30mpg is good from the Fit. I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again... This past summer while in Austria I rented a Renault Clio 5door hatch with manual transmission. It may be a touch bigger than the Fit. It has a 1.2 liter turbo gasoline engine. Cruising at 110-115kmh I averaged 65mpg.Around town I was getting about 40mpg. That is US gallons not Euro gallons, I converted liters to US gallons.
If you check the Renault, or Citroen etc websites, this is a common figure.
The small 'economical' cars we get in the US are crap. They are only economical because the press compares them to lumbering 14mpg SUVs.

Actually, those 350 gallons worth of price difference would take almost 109,000 miles to make up. With a fuel economy difference of only 3.5 mpg the equation is 34.8x=31.3(x+350) This means it takes 3130 gals in the Smart or 3480 gals in the Fit to get those 350 gals back and that is 108,924 miles.

desmolicious,
The Renault costs $17,489 - $29,564 USD,
157 inches long, rated at
75 hp, 0-62 in 13.4sec, 39.8 mpg combined Euro cycle,
101 hp, 11 sec, 40 mpg combined,
200 hp, 6 sec, 27.8 mpg combined.

The Honda Fit (er, Jazz) in the UK costs $18,403 - $23,561 USD.
76 hp, 13.7 sec, 42.7 mpg combined
82 hp, 13.3 sec, 40.5 mpg combined

The Honda Fit in the US costs $15,220-$19,430
117 hp, 8.3 seconds, 31 US MPG combined EPA cycle (which is probably something like 37 mpg Euro cycle).

We Americans are advocating for our pocket books.
Using the "environment" is a tool of our argument. The "environment" is not the end; it is the means.

0-60 in 11 seconds is also unthinkable in the USA.
ELEVEN SECONDS?!?!?!?! I rather shoot myself with my shotgun collection and feed myself to the deers!

In the UK, "American Premium fuel" 91 octane M+S (95 RON) fuel is the cheapest gas ($7.69 USD/gal) available. Their engines are allowed better tuning as such.

$7.69 per gallon?!?!?!? I rather shoot myself with my shotgun collection and feed myself to the deers!

And yes I have meat eating deers in my backyard! ROWRRRRRRRR......

FYI for confusion's sake:
UK Mazdaspeed3:
20.9/37.7/29.1 mpg UK units, or
17.4/31.4/24.2 mpg US units.

US Mazdaspeed3:
18/25/20 mpg US units.

The testing cycle difference results in a combined 17.4% lower.

Which puts the American Honda Fit's mpg at 37.51 mpg in the UK. Or, I mean, 45 mpg, in UK units.

Average UK price of lowest grade gas: $7.69
Average US price of lowest grade gas: $3.64

Driving a 40 mpg Clio costs the same as driving an 18.9 mpg vehicle in the US.
Whip out the Buick Enclave baby! It's roughly the same shape as the Clio...

billt9, good job, bravo.....I agreed 100% with everything you said.

You fail to understand that I did not read off some facts, I actually rented the car and drove it.
I did not get 45mpg in UK units. I got 65mpg in US gallons. And it was fine with 5 people in it.
Say gas is twice the cost there. So it would be the equivalent of getting 32mpg here.
But how about having a car like that here? You'd still be getting 65mpg, but using half price US gas! But just bleating that gas is cheaper here so it does not matter is exactly what it keeping these fun to drive, and astonishingly econmical cars out of the US market.
p.s. there is also the environmental costs. Say money didn't matter... a car that gets 65 or 40mpg is going to pollute far far less than one that gets 18mpg.

Yes I understand.
However, as an American, I like to leave my engine running while I am sitting in the car just listening to my 14 speakers pumping out the OOMPH.
If I turn my engine off, my battery may become depleted to a point where it's unrechargeable.

...Can you even put 14 speakers in the Clio?
I think the girls are laughing at your small... you know.

Oh! You like the nice no-makeup environmentalist women. LOL.

P.S. I can buy my kids 2 Cobalts for the price of one Clio.

And I'm taking this conversation down a path of wrongness until it's wrong enough to get deleted lolol.

OK, OK, so here's a better, politically correct explanation by Edmunds of why a Clio won't be getting your "60 mpg" when driven in the USA, and why the EPA cycle is more accurate than the Euro cycle.

Edmunds got 22.7 mpg in a 1.4-liter Nissan Cube, because it had to maintain redlining just to keep up with American traffic... which is not 0-60 in 13 seconds.
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/Comparos/articleId=124845

Anything that comes to the USA needs a big engine and suck more gas. Even if you put a nice small environmentally correct engine in a car, it will guzzle if it is driving in USA traffic patterns, and be a dangerous vehicle on top of that.

No wonder Europeans think they are superior to Americans.

Are you guys listening to yourself?

Good grief, it's embarrassing.

Go to Europe sometime. They don't drive slow either. They also don't define themself by the size of the car or their engine.

Zero to 60 in 11 seconds is not slow. Time yourself in traffic sometime. Bet you rarely do it in less then 20 seconds.

"Zero to 60 in 11 seconds is not slow. Time yourself in traffic sometime. Bet you rarely do it in less then 20 seconds."

...Because we don't redline our engines. The 0-60 time is getting the most power out of the engine, doing 8 mpg instantaneously.

If a car is rated at 0-60 in 11 seconds, in normal pedal usage it would get you there in 30 seconds.

P.S. Us proud Americans think we are superior to Europeans too. Just ask who built the nuclear bomb? We did. That's right.

"Just ask who built the nuclear bomb? We did. That's right."

You're proud of that? (Sorry if you being sarcastic, hard to tell in print)

bilt9 continues to not get it.
I'm not reading off specs, I rented and drove the car the way one would drive a car on the motorways in Austria and Switzerland. I got 65mpg. I repeat I got 65 mpg. To translate the speed I was going as these FACTS seem to fail comprenshion, I was driving between 65 and 75 mph. The same speeds that one would drive in Southern California, given our traffic conditions.
My daily driver in LA is a BMW 330i. It is much faster than the Clio if I drive it in such a way. But in the normal driving that one does every day the Clio would get anywhere just as quickly as my BMW, as one does not drive with the pedal to the metal all the time.
Claiming that the Clio would cost twice as much here is the same as claiming my BMW would cost twice as much here when you compare the exchange rates from the prices for my BMW in Europe and the US. Guess what? It doesn't! Vehicles are priced according to what the market would bear. Simple business 101.
Bottom line, the Europeans have these fantastic cars out there that people like Bilt9 cannot comprehend, which is why he claims they will cost twice as much, be as fuel efficent as an Buick SUV or whatever other junk he wants to spout out.
Fine, be happy with your gas guzzlers and be impressed if a car gets 30mpg but trying to hide behind smug and condescending remarks is EXACTLY why the American auto industry is in it's dire straights. And is exactly why companies like Ford are now looking to bring in some of that European magic to the US.
Who knew xenophobia translates to the auto industry?

$22k?? Wow. I can see why some people would want to spend $15k on the Smart. It's quirky and interesting, but for $22k I'd give up quirky and interesting for something with actual talent. A Civic Si maybe? Perhaps a Mini?

Quoting Billt9: "0-60 in 11 seconds is also unthinkable in the USA.
ELEVEN SECONDS?!?!?!?! I rather shoot myself with my shotgun collection and feed myself to the deers!"

This is what's wrong with the North American world view vis-a-vis cars. You're so focused on sprint speed off the line - which in the real world is irrelevant, of course, but you still hold onto it like a child clings to a blanket - that you convince yourself that every car you have must have 250+ hp and a 0-60 time of under 8 seconds.

Get with the program, man. You can have a fun and engaging driving experience without gobs of gas guzzling power under the hood. I read phrases like yours and shake my head in frustration, because it's attitudes like this that ensured U.S. didn't learn its lesson during the FIRST energy crunch in the early 70s. If only you had wised up then, you wouldn't be in this pickle now.

Better start looking more closely at your collection, bill.

For the most part, European cars don't need 0-60 sprints because of their small towns and narrow roads. Then again, I think Europeans are smart enough not to put their 2CVs on highways.

Also, the same company that makes the Smart (Mercedes Benz) also makes the C65 AMG. I think they know how to make a quick car when they want to.

The funny thing is that Bilt thinks these small European cars can't handle the US speeds.
Wake up call, people drive much faster in Europe than they do in the US on their motorways.
As for slow cars, my other car is a Jeep Wrangler. Love it and I've driven it everywhere and anywhere. And again, unless I'm either:
a/ on a long mountain or canyon road
b/ on a really long (all day long with no traffic) freeway trip
I'm going to get there just as quickly in my Jeep as my BMW because guess what? There are cops out there waiting to bust speeders AND most traffic situations in CA do not allow you to maintain continuous elevated speeds. As in way above 75mph.

So, again, why would you not want a car that in regular use can get 65mpg on the motorway w/o having to resort to a lame driving experience like with the Prius. Which gets quite a bit lower mpg? The Clio with it's 5 speed manual transmission actually was kinda fun to drive.
But this is the American market and there are still an awful lot of people out there who are mindlessly numb to the acceptance of driving gas hogs as commuter vehicles and think that a vehicle that gets 30mpg is doing really well.

where are you getting a 0-60 of 11 secs from?

Dynolicious measured 0-60 in 13+ secs.

http://www.myride.com/lifestyle/iphone_road_test_2008_smart_passion_cabriolet-4138-page1.html?id=30398

I think there are a lot of stereotypes about European roads and car markets in play here. I can assure you that not every European lives in a small town with narrow, windy roads. While small vehicles (including motorbikes and scooters) are perfectly suited for the city, they most definitely translate to the country as well. Its just a matter of changing how you think about the car you drive. Vehicles like the Fit and MINI are great for North America, and I hope they continue the trend of smaller but still fun vehicles.

The Altima really ruined things. No family sedan needs that much HP.

Paying $22k, or even $15k for a Smart, is dumb. Especially when you consider you can buy a Jetta TDI, you know, a REAL car, that gets better mileage for around $20k.