The end of the 2,5m short Smart ForTwo car?

I hope it is just a bad April joke, but my hopes are not high, given the complete and utterly failure of the DaimlerChrysler management to understand why people buy a Smart ForTwo car. With a total lenght (or shortness) of 2,5m you find a parking spot even in worst crowded city centers. Inside even 2m people find enough leg space to sit comfortably, while still having enough trunk space for all your weekend shopping and short trips.

Now I heard a well founded rumor, that next year´s Smart ForTwo will be 18cm LONGER and the current model with 2,5m will no longer be produced! Did anybody of the Smart or DaimlerChrysler management ever try to find a parking space inside a typical European city without a chaffeur, who takes care of the car parking? Even at 2,5m it sometimes is hard to find a parking space, so having the option to park at 90 degrees gives you the chance to fit into 1,5m parking spaces! Making the car just a few centimeters longer makes it impossible to park at 90 degrees in a normal parking lane.

No wonder, that DaimlerChrysler lost tons of money on Smart cars, when their management just doesn´t understand the unique value of their own cars.



BTW: in the past the Smart management brought out two completely useless model lines, the Smart ForFour and the Smart Roadster, which had no unique values at all and they even had the nonsense idea to develop a Smart SUV! And given the fact, that DaimlerChrysler is owned in part by the Kuwaitis, it is no wonder, that they are not able to build Diesel cars, where you are allowed to tank BioDiesel made from locally grown plants.



P.S.: I guess nobody at DaimlerChrysler ever wondered, why there are still thousands of Fiat 500s from the 60s on the streets of all the major cities in Europe. For a few decades they were the only option, if you wanted a short car to find a parking space, albeit with a very cramped interior and not enough space for people and luggage. The original Smart (ForTwo) is (was?) definitively the first and only car, that is short enough outside, and still comfortable spacy inside. It would be really too bad if they would vanish again.