http://www.mbcanada.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1148

Hope this is true!

 

Here's another source:

http://pub42.ezboard.com/fcafeurbani...tart=1&stop=20

 

A couple of problems with importing a CDN smart to the USA come to mind:

1) M-B Canada is definitely going to demand that every smart buyer sign a contract that requires them to pay M-B Canada a large sum of money when the private owner sells the car FOR EXPORT within the first couple of years of ownership. They already do this with M-B cars because ours in Canada are a fair bit cheaper than the ones sold in USA.

2) direct sale from a dealer to a US resident will also be disallowed, and it'll be easy to detect a non-Canadian giving a Canadian address where they do not reside.

So you may eventually get some Canadian smarts but I doubt it'll be in the first couple of years following their introduction in this country.

The other thing is service and parts - that would be a pain in the *** without M-B's US dealer network assisting. No aftermarket workshop manual company makes a smart service guide and so far as I know neither does smart, even in Europe. It's mostly electronic stuff now anyway, so specialised equipment is required for regular maintenance items such as clutch adjustment.........

Sorry guys, but we promise to wave back when driving our smarts across the border

 

Just one word for that last comment -- "Smart"aleck.

 

I was being a jerk....

I am, however, pleased that Canada is getting these things. If it had to be USA or Canada, I think they chose right

I hope the smart fever spreads south and they're introduced there too. We're only getting them because of the stunningly huge public demand. We are a tiny car market (smaller than CA USA). Canadians already buy a lot more small cars than Americans, so we're perhaps a safer bet commercially.

 

cool

The coupe actually looks ok

 

the plant that is assembling the smart(ys) is a subsiduary of a canadian owned company.

Can you say Belinda Stronachs daddy?

 

Yeah, but they only do the tailored blanks and other sheet metal assembly. And it's at the smart plant itself at Hambach.

I wonder if Belinda will be back in the Magna business soon...

 

I think she will do what her Pappy tells her to do.
Barry

 

I saw the Smart cars in Europe. The coup is especially nice, but very small.

 

Have cash, where do I send deposit

 

If you're south of Nouvelle Orléans you might be closer to a smart source in Mexico. Importing and registering teh car in the USA will be the major headache. Canadian and US safety/emission control standards are almost the same, but Mexican ones are more like those of Europe, I believe.

 

It'll get crushed by any SUV.

 

Nice try, but it's not the case.

The smart is stronger than larger cars/trucks, and will NOT be crushed by them. The opposite is true.

Mercedes-Benz did a demonstration of the smart's strength about a month ago in Sindelfingen, with the Canadian automotive press present. It's about to be sold in Canada and your misapprehension was exactly why they did it.

A smart fortwo cdi (950 kg loaded) and a new Mercedes E-Class at 2000 kg (loaded) were sent into each other at an offset angle, each car traveling at 50 km/h. The smart was visually in far better shape following the test than the E-Class. The stiff smart safety cell activated the E-Class' crush zones, possibly writing the E-Class off. The smart would have been a writeoff too. The result was no injuries for the E-Class dummies and extremely minor injuries on the dummies in the smart.

The smart is designed to take twice the g-loading of a conventional car without transferring these forces to the occupants. And it works.

 

I don't know if this'll be moderated out of here, but I'll give a plug for the smart forum at the following URL. It's based in Canada, which will soon be smart-land

http://www.mbcanada.com/forum/index.php?showforum=17

 

Mike t:
The flaw in the logic, which is quite apparent, is this. If the Smart activates the E class crush zone to gain its own protection, is it not logical that two crush zones in two e class would be so much more effective?

Conversley in the absence of a convienient E class to run into where does the crush zone come from? Picture a concrete pillar in a tunnel in France say, or a bridge abutment, or the CN Tower, none is going to offer much forgiveness.

You see my point?

Barry

 

maybe I could sneak one across inside of a U-Haul. Cover it with aliens.

 

No no, you are thinking linearly.

The smart indeed has a crush zone. Its initial (replaceable) element can take bumps up to 15 km/h with no damage to the Tridion cell, and barrier crashes at over 64 km/h are not a problem either. The front wheels and various deformable tubes provide the equivalent of a larger car's excessive sheet metal. That the smart will destroy a larger car's crush zone is not an indication that it has none of its own.

Notwithstanding that, the most important thing in any collision is not the crush zone per se, but rather the effective g-loadings that the occupants of a vehicle experience in any crash. Having excess "soft" crush space is one way to mitigate g-loadings. There are many others.

As I wrote in the above posting, the smart is designed to take twice the g-loadings of a conventional car (read: E Class etc) but only pass on the equivalent of one g to the people inside. It does this in a number of ways. One is the rear-mounted engine/drivetrain, which evens the odds when hitting more massive vehicles or indeed static obstacles by limiting the rebound effect. Another is the internal space that is available for controlled passenger decelerations, much more than in a conventional sedan. A further method is the reinforced seat design. The entire backrest is in sheet steel, programmed to deform in a controlled way, reducing effective g-loadings.

If you want to get into a deep technical discussion on this topic I'd recommend you contact Mercedes-Benz and smart GmbH directly. I'm sure they'd love to explain to you how this all works.

Remember, Mercedes designed the smart, and it performed better in the EuroNCAP crash test than the W202 C-class. It is safe. Really. And it gets 80 MPG US in the cdi Diesel form that we're getting in Canada.