Small cars are unsafe, right? Not so much. As part of the launch buzz for the new Smart ForTwo, the guys at Daimler have released a video showing how the little city car fares when it collides at speed with a much, much larger vehicle.
The 2016 Smart ForTwo — it’ll go on sale, at least in the US, in late 2015 — is a pleasantly light (and presumably quite chuckable) 1124kg, but its ‘tridion’ passenger safety cell stands up perfectly (to the naked eye, at least) when the new city car comes up in a 50 per cent head-on collision with a mid-2000s 2308kg Mercedes Benz S-Class. Hopefully this puts paid to the myth that a new, small car is less safe than an old, large one.
It might not be the most attractive small car out there — that honour goes to the Abarth 500 — but there’s something I really like about the new Smart ForTwo. For one thing, it finally has a proper five-speed manual ‘box, instead of the apparently clunky automated manual of the old car. That combined with the rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive architecture and super-short wheelbase should make for a fun little car.
Smart’s new city cars aren’t a surefire thing for Australia, though. The Motor Report says that the brand’s parent company is still weighing up the business case for selling locally. [Jalopnik]