In the 1984 Woody Allen movie Broadway Danny Rose, the title character, played by Allen himself, is a small-time showbiz manager whose clients are mostly grade-zero, D-minus-list, minimally talented entertainers with no chance of making it - and the few entertainers Danny manages who do turn out to have talent and promise eventually drop him for another manager. Part of the way through the movie, we are introduced to a character named Barney Dunn, a small-time stand-up comic whose jokes are no laughing matter; he's so bad, even Danny won't take him on as a client.
The Smart Car is the Barney Dunn of automobiles.
Americans who love small cars are clearly a minority, and there seem to be fewer of us each year. The Smart Car, though, is so small and so ridiculous, even small-car fans in the United States wouldn't want one. It looks more like a giant roller skate than a small car. Its tiny interior seats two, but it looks like a car the even the driver alone can barely fit in. A Skechers shoe commercial featuring retired football player Howie Long uses the Smart Car, which Long tries to sit in, as a metaphor for how some shoes make Long's feet feel cramped and uncomfortable. This car could get squashed in an accident with a Honda Civic, never mind an SUV. Even I wouldn't buy it.
Which is precisely why Daimler AG, which makes the Smart Car, is pulling it from the U.S. market.
The Smart Fortwo, as it's officially called, never caught on with Americans expect as a punchline. Republicans who were against a proposed increase of fuel economy standards in 2002 used the Smart, which would debut in America in 2008, as an example of what Americans would be forced to buy if such standards were adopted. That was a gross exaggeration, but when then-U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) called it a glorified golf cart, it was an insult to golf carts. The fact that it lasted eleven years in the American market is actually quite remarkable. But even the four-dollar-a-gallon gas that Americans had to put up with the same year the Smart debuted here couldn't justify a car like this. This car is better for countries whose cities have side streets narrower than an office building corridor, where gas is more expensive than it ever has been in the States.
I hate to rag on small cars, but the Smart is simply too small. It's tiny, in fact. A Honda Fit is about as small a car as anyone should ever want. The Smart Car has served one valuable purpose, though; it's given minimally talented comics like the fictional Barney Dunn and the non-fictional Kit Bond a chance to joke about it and get genuine laughs out of their audiences.
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