Rumble in the parking lot on Black Friday, starring the Smart Fortwo.

I’m not usually one to do much Black Friday shopping, and I certainly don’t shop on Thanksgiving itself, but I did venture out into the retail world this past Friday.  Because I was up and driving home from downtown Minneapolis at about three in the morning anyway on Friday, I decided to hop on the interstate and swing by Best Buy, where I bought their black Friday sale special Microsoft Surface tablet on which I am writing this post.  You’re reading the post, so one can safely surmise that the tablet works.  I have an iPad, and I actually prefer it to the Surface now that I own one of each, but the iPad does not let me work on my blog….  It only lets me drop pictures in at the top half of the first page of text.  Not sure why it does that, but it does.  Score one for the Surface tablet, I suppose. 

 

But this blog isn’t about tablet pcs vs. the iPad.  This is supposed to be about cars.  Rest assured, I am gradually working my way around to the topic at hand.  I just started off pretty far from the mark as opposed to my normal derailment of thought that carries us away from the main subject and off into tangent land.  Anyway, after I got home from Best Buy, which was in almost no time at all because there weren’t any lines when I got there, I messed around with my new Surface for a while before calling it a night.  I was going to go to the gym as planned, but between the novelty of the new electronic device and the fact that my boxing gloves smell funny and I’ve been thus far reluctant to experiment with sending them through the washing machine, I decided the gym could happen another night.  By the way, if any of my readers out there happen to know about how to properly wash boxing gloves, please share your insights. 

Where was I?  Oh right, I was being lazy about going to the gym and was staying up late playing with my new toy.  So eventually, I called it a night, and woke up in the early afternoon Friday.  I realized that I am supposed to bake some stuff for this get together at my sister’s house Saturday, so I got up and went grocery shopping.  One of my many stops in search of gluten free sugar cookie dough for this recipe I’m making happened to be a Target store.  I noted that the black Friday shoppers had brought with them a shopping element that displayed the inconsiderate habits you typically see from Wal Mart shoppers, that is, just abandoning shopping carts in the lot after they’re done with them.  I therefore bypassed even the normal distanced parking area I like to leave my car at to avoid cart dings, and drove around to the side rear of the store.  There were still plenty of cars around, but I found a spot to park where there were empty spaces on either side of the stall I drove into.  This approach to parking can usually be counted on to protect one’s car because typically, people who are too lazy to walk their carts back to the cart corral are also too lazy to hoof it halfway around the building to get into the store. 

 

 

 As I was putting my car in park, I saw the guy parked closest to me shove his red shopping cart into the empty spot between my Mustang and his car, a white and blue Smart ForTwo that looked a lot like this one I have pictured here, but did not feature the Car2go logo, then, he walked around and got behind the wheel of his car.  I gestured at his cart from inside my car, and he pretended not to see me.  I got out and noticed the smug little grin on his face as he was backing out of his parking space, so I pointed to his cart and said “nice work, douche bag!” to which he responded by flipping up his middle finger at me, then he drove away in his ridiculous car, which was not actually all that much larger than the damn shopping cart he so thoughtlessly flung into the parking lot.  I ended up hauling his stupid cart back to the corral, cursing him and his car the whole way.  I mean, this guy was a perfectly able bodied 20-something year old man –there’s no reason why he could not have returned his cart to the proper place.   

So anyway, today’s vehicle is one I feature out of spite.  I’m not a big fan of Smart cars to begin with, and this little interaction with one of their drivers is probably not going to improve my outlook on these vehicles.  Still, it’s our real topic for the day, so let’s see what we can learn about the Smart Fortwo. 

 

The Smart car is made by Daimler, known best perhaps, for Mercedes Benz.  So, the Smart Fortwo is a German car, though it is assembled in France.  One kind of neat thing about the Fortwo is that the plastic body panels are designed to be easy to swap out.  Unfortunately, the only things you can interchange them with are other Fortwo panels, so the car is going to look like it does no matter what you do, it seems. 

 

According to the Smart website, a base level “pure coupe” Fortwo has a starting price of $13,270.  This price gets you a lot of stuff that’s so very basic, it seems like it ought to go without saying that a car should come with these features…. Like a dome light, air conditioning, floor mats, and a cup holder.  You also get 15” steel wheels and a 50,000 mile 48 month warranty.   For some extra money, you can get some nice stuff, too.  Heated seats will cost another $240, which isn’t bad, actually, but I don’t know if that’s just butt heat, or if it has a heated lumbar area, too.  You can get an anti-theft system installed for $200, but I think the looks of the Fortwo are enough of a theft deterrent that you can just save that $200 for something else, like an arm rest…. That’s right, you have to pay an extra $80 to get an armrest, but just one, mind you, for the driver.  The passenger gets nothing.  Want power steering?  That’ll be an extra $550, please.  If you figure you might get tired of hearing all the snickers and disparaging remarks made by people you drive by, you might want to dish out another $350 for a radio –it comes with an auxiliary and USB port.  Cruise control will cost you another $280.  Center console storage?  Tack on another $30 –though I’m not sure what exactly that gets you, I’m picturing a shoe box with a Smart logo sticker pasted on it jammed between the seats on the transmission hump. 

Oh, that guy in the Target lot has really turned me bitter about these little cars.  I feel like I’m being rather hard on these little things.  Perhaps the power specs will brighten things up a bit.  What’s under the hood?  Nothing, actually…. These are rear engine cars.  Well then, what’s in the space where one might expect to find a hamster running on a wheel to make the car go?  A 1.0 liter (actually, it’s only 61 cubic inches, so it’s just shy of a full liter) inline 3 cylinder engine that creates 70 HP and 68 lb-ft of torque, paired with a five speed transmission.  The curb weight on a Smart Fortwo is right around 1,800 lbs, and it has a fuel tank capacity of just under 9 gallons.  Well, not terribly impressive, but more than enough power to propel a car this size.   

 

Aside from having at least one driver who engages in an activity that is one of my biggest pet peeves, the Smart Fortwo has a lot working against it.  This notion of having to tack on optional things just to get to the basic level of what a car buyer expects to find in a new car is silly.  I like to keep things simple, but there are some things that people just ought not to have to ask for, they ought to just be there.  The Fortwo is like a golf cart that has been only mildly upfitted to work as a car.  By the time you get one optioned with things that make it kind of bearable to own, you might as well buy something else and get the same or better performance, more room, and better standard features.   Not to mention that driving one of these things puts you among the ranks of that douche bag from the Target parking lot who just ditched his cart and drove away.  Not smart.