Thursday, April 07, 2005

Smart cars for carsharing?

Well, now Daimler Chrysler says they're NOT going to bring the 2-seater Smart to the US. Funny, they sold 3,000 in Canada last year but they don't think it's appropriate here? With the whole Smart brand in trouble, you'd think they'd be interested in stimulating sales? Mercedes dealers here must have nixxed the idea for fear it would cheapen the M-B brand - but it's hard to imagine how - they had a model that was selling for under $25,000 and the much vaunted Mercedes reliability is in the toilet according to Consumer Reports.

So US carsharing companies will have to continue to look with envy to our neighbor-carshares to the north who can buy Smarts (albeit only diesel models for some reason), or pay the premium that Zap Motors is charging for converting gasoline Smarts to US specs.

What do you think? How would US carsharing customers respond to Smart cars?