The last smart fortwo has been delivered. It's time to say goodbye

Perhaps many have driven it. Everyone (or almost everyone) has certainly seen it. Maybe at the last minute, thinking there was an empty parking spot and instead there it was, hidden among other cars. The smart fortwo has always "played" hide and seek in our cities, starring in a leading role in mobility that was not there before.

A car concentrated in a length of less than 3 metres, born for cities and capable of winning the hearts of millions of motorists. Especially in Italy, particularly Rome, the Eternal City in fact holds the record for smart fortwo registrations: more than 200,000. If you have ever driven around it, even just once, you will understand why.

Goodbye and thank you

Now the story of the smart fortwo is coming to an end. Production lines stopped and the last units delivered. The one for Italy ended up in Milan - with good grace in Rome - in the hands of Gaia Pisani, the last Italian customer to buy a new smart fortwo. From today if you want one you will have to turn to the second-hand market. 

A piece of motoring history that is leaving in the silence of the electric car, waiting for an successor, the smart fortwo may in fact be returning. Uniquely battery-powered and with the ultra-compact dimensions we are used to, work on the platform has begun, and in the meantime partners are being sought with whom to share the costs of making the production car.

smart fortwo and Gaia Pisani, the latest Italian buyer of the electric two-seater

grief

smart fortwo, the story

And of course, you might say, what a sensation. Among the brains behind the birth of the smart is the brilliant Nicolas Hayek, who turned the Swatch into a global phenomenon.

The reasoning doesn't make a wrinkle, but transferring Hayek's watch philosophy to a car is not so obvious, especially if your partner in the enterprise is called Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) and by trade produces very prestigious cars, designed for those who tend not to go below an Omega chronograph; anything but Swatch. And yet, the fortwo (which at first is only smart) seems to be the transposition on four wheels of the concepts of the £40 watches, that was their basic price in the 1990s.

smart fortwo

grief

smart fortwo

Of the Swatch, at least according to Hayek's wishes, the car should also have had the power supply: yes, the boss would have liked it to be electric, but the time was not yet ripe. They will be from 2020, when smart will only produce 100% battery-powered cars. 

Tridion and coloured plastic

Let's talk about Mercedes. Although the city car being designed is destined to be born under a different brand name, the Germans are not prepared to lower the bar even one millimetre when it comes to safety. With this in mind, the car is conceived around the  Tridion, a genuine super impact-resistant skeleton, capable of an uncompromising level of occupant protection despite its small dimensions.

The Tridion cell of the smart fortwo

grief

Everything else is then 'attached' to this survival cell including the plastic body panels in a wide variety of colours, plain or in all kinds of combinations. The imagination also runs free in the interior, where rounded vents, 'satellite' instruments emerging from the dashboard and colourful upholstery brighten up the city queues.

And to think that Ferdinand Piech, then big boss of the Volkswagen Group, says no, he prefers the Lupo, because he considers a two-seater car too big a risk. Yes, because before Daimler, Hayek and his men submitted the two-seater city car project to VW (but also to BMW and Fiat), but only found fertile ground in Stuttgart, where they had already been working on a city car for some years.

It is the classic example of the right meeting at the right time, the one between the management of Daimler and Swatch: the rest is history, of success. Rome and the Romans, for example, fall in love with it. Yes, even the city seems to be welcoming a car that is finally small, that takes away everything superfluous and, what there is, dyes it with cheerfulness. Result: to this day, the capital of Italy is the world's No. 1 city in terms of the number of fortwo cars sold.

Problematic start

You know the moose test? Yes, the one famous for nearly crippling not the poor animal living in the cold, but the Mercedes A-Class. Well, it too made Daimler management tremble for the second time in a short space of time when the smart, in the fateful sudden change of direction made at speed, also rolled over.

grief

This time, not at the hands of magazine testers, but at the hands of the company's own test drivers, who first had their doubts after seeing what happened with the A-Class. Well, the smart saw its market debut postponed and, because of the additional investment required, Swatch withdrew from the SOFIREM joint venture, with headquarters in Hambach, France, and ownership split as follows: 38.3% for Daimler, 36.7% for SMH and 25% for the French state company for the development of the region. 

Almost 20 million lire

The corporate vicissitudes were resolved with Daimler taking over the entire capital, while on the product side, the smart was modified (wider tyres at the rear, a stiffer set-up and ESP as standard) and presented in its final version at the 1997 Frankfurt Motor Show.

Sales began on 2 July of the following year and few people bet on the smart's success, also thanks to a Mercedes scale price: around 18 million lire. The history books say otherwise. To the delight of Daimler and all those who develop the 'smart addiction', that addiction that takes hold of you from the very first time you drive it around town and ask yourself why, until then, you had gone around with all the 'unnecessary' equipment - at least - more bodywork than the others. 

smart fortwo cabrio

The development of the range

Sales volumes exceeded the expectations of Daimler itself, which in 2003 did not content itself with the usual restyling, but expanded the range to include roadsters and roadster coupés, as well as the first smart Brabus. In 2004 came the smart forfour, based on the Mitsubishi Colt and produced in Holland.

Roadster and forfour were actually not great successes; production of the second one ended after just two years, when it was decided to concentrate efforts on the second generation fortwo in 2007. In 2014, however, the third generation arrived, expanding again to include the forfour, thanks in part to an agreement with Renault, which based the forfour on the Twingo. 

The electric arrives

The world is starting to talk about electric cars, and these are becoming more and more numerous. The fortwo had already tried to run on battery power with the ED (acronym for Electric Drive), based on the second generation.

smart fortwo ED

grief

smart forwto EQ

Taking advantage of its city-car nature with not much range, the smart fortwo became electric again, adding the suffix EQ. The company's first step towards the electric version that now dominates its price list.

---

---

The combustion versions are gradually phased out and, as is traditional, special versions arrive, with dedicated liveries and interiors. The fortwo is small, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want to transform and renew itself every time.

Until today, with the final farewell. 

smart for tomorrow:

smart's new SUV to be unveiled on 28 August

The Smart Roadster could return in the next few years

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motor1.com?

Take our 3 minute survey.

- The Motor1.com Team