Smart Cars Rolling In Europe
The newest trend in automotive thinking is lurking at Europe's motor shows this fall, poised to invade the U.S. They call it the Smart Car and it seems the ultimate expression of the proposition that less is more. CBS News' Correspondent Mark Phillips has the story.
The Smart Car seems more like half-a-car, a two-seater for buzzing around town. It's designed by Mercedes, which knows about cars, and by the Swatch watch people, who know about stylish small things. And it's become not so much as car as a fashion accessory.
Why do people like it? "Because it is different, because it is fun, because it's small, because it's new, and that's it," says Parisian Alexandre Elalouf.
And that appears to be enough. The car's being sold as taking up less road, using less gas and being less of a hassle to park than its larger cousins. But it's turning heads wherever it goes and is even being tried as a police car -- a novel approach to criminal apprehension.
Sgt. Shaun Cronin, a policeman in Dorset, England, has his doubts. "You'd probably catch the criminals, though, because they'd fall over laughing at you," he says.
For getting around town, the Smart Car would appear to make economic and environmental sense. The question is, does it make business sense? Are modern urban motorists as smart as the car they're being offered? Initial sales were slow, but have now picked up.
Still, the wrong sort of people seem to be buying the car. Most buyers are not, it turns out, the little old ladies for whom it was intended. Rather, they are "very active urban people who need to go form one place to the other very quickly," according to Stephanie Chassagne, a dealership manager in Paris.
And as for the American market, it's there for the taking, at least according to American tourists who drop into the showroom here. As Michael Tegerdine, a British Smart Car dealer, says "The feeling is overwhelmingly, 'When is this thing coming to the states? I want to take it home in my overhead luggage.'"
Which, until the Smart Car passes U.S. environmental tests, may be the only way to get one there.