Smart Car Offers Drivers New High MPG Option, Top Crash Rating

by Kellen Schefter

01/20/2008

Those who have followed the development of Daimler AG’s tiny and trendy microcar, the smart (lower case intentional), have surely wondered about this vehicle’s safety. Now they need wonder no more. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently crash tested the 2008 smart for two and found it performed so well it earned the Institute’s best ratings for front and side crash protection. Plus, its rear crash worthiness was rated as “acceptable,” the Institute’s second-highest rating.

Driving the smart fortwo in the United States, which we did recently in Northern California, serves as a clear reminder of just how different the smart really is. Like the VW New Beetle and Mini Cooper before it, the smart elicits looks: Our test drive became the subject of countless cell phone camera snapshots as we passed through downtown Palo Alto and San Jose. But unlike those cars, which reinvigorated an existing vehicle segment through nostalgia-laden styling, the smart is so small and so new that, to American eyes at least, it’s unlike anything else on the road.

Read more here: http://www.greencar.com/articles/smart-car-offers-drivers-new-high-mpg-option-top-crash-rating.php

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