Smart Fortwo hits the market
8 April 2009
5 Comments
The miniture Smart fortwo has hit the market at long last in China, priced from 150,800rmb to a whopping 200,600rmb (thats 16,000Euro to 23,000Euro), which makes it a smart purchase only for the rich.
The Smart car range has actually been available in China for quite some time, albeit through gray market channels. Also the Smart car has found itself with many clones of itself here in China, clones that cost as little as 5,000Euros from the dealer, yes, we’re thinking of the Little Nobel
The Smart car will find itself a niche market, and will undoubtedly find itself buyers in big metropolitan cities where the Smart car will become the ultimate ‘must have‘ fashion accessory.
I prefer my Noble
Tell us all about it?! Have you managed to pull the dashboard out?
Well, good value for money I would say. I got a big discount when I bought it March 2008 (paid 45K RMB for the glass roof top model 1.1L).
Of course everything is so cheap. The whole dashboard is not well fixed, direction not pretty smooth, I suspect the breaks to have some kind of problem but my garage said everything is fine.
The engine is great, can go up to 170 km/h on highways, good punch. I made several long trips from Beijing to Shenyang (above 700 km) and no problems. I have made 15000 km and no problem so far.
A friend of mine had an accident with the same car: hit a VW Polo laterally at 30 to 40 km/h. The whole Polo right side was destroy, pretty much nothing on the Nobble. No injuries.
To summarize:
+ good value for money
+ bigger than a fortwo, you can have passengers or pull the rear seats to put stuff
+ very nice punchy engine
+ air conditioning
- very very poor quality: dashboard, windows buttons, seats
- direction not smooth
In this price range you have: Cherry QQ, BYD F0, Suzuki Alto, Geely 203 & 303 & SRV, Xiali N3 and maybe some others…
If I had to buy a new car in China in a similar price range between 35K to 60K RMB, I would go again for this one.
BYD F0 is nice, I would consider if a 3 doors version come out.
The smart retail price should be as follows:
Smart fortwo Coupe Standard – RMB158,000
Smart fortwo Coupe Style – RMB176,000
Smart fortwo Cabrio Standard – RMB188,000
Smart fortwo Cabrio Style – RMB206,000
Sally, thanks for the update.
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