From the 2015 New York International Auto Show, Cars.com's Kelsey Mays takes a look at the 2016 Smart ForTwo.
Transcript
(car engine starting) <v Kelsey Mays>Smart redesigned the Fortwo, it's two seat mini car, that's about the size of a bowling ball, actually a little bigger than that, but still a tiny car in every major dimension. We're here at the auto show.
It's just been redesigned. Let's see if smart pulled a strike on this one. Now the new Fortwo's kind of big new facial change here, includes these sort of giant insect like headlights. Not really sure I like them, but definitely a wider expression overall and part of that comes from the fact that the car itself is about four inches wider now. It's still a very short car bumper to bumper at about 106 inches, but one thing that's been seriously decreased for the new generation is the turning circle on the Smart ForTwo. It's down to about 22.8 feet. Smart says that's down about six feet versus last years Fortwo and it's about a third, less than a car like the Toyota Corolla. So you'll be wanting to make you turns everywhere now. Inside the ForTwo has a very playful interior and it remains more spacious than it seems like it should be looking at the outside of the car. Lots of interesting kind of textures and themes going on here, some wraparound stuff along the dashboard, this three-dimensional layout here with the radio kind of sitting forward and a little bit above the materials behind it. Smart says this covering over the dashboard is actually supposed to simulate the canvas on the outside of an athletic shoe. I guess it does that in an all right sort of way. And the car feels like a real car now, things like a tilt adjustable steering wheel, height adjustable driver's seat. Those were features that you should pretty much get in every car, but you actually couldn't get in the last generation ForTwo. Another big improvement, theoretically, although we got to test it, is the transmission, there is now a manual or dual clutch automatic transmission. They replaced last year's single clutch, a five speed automatic, which was pretty much the worst feature of the car. A two piece tailgate sort of cements the ForTwo city friendly credentials, a little more work to open here, but obviously if you're looking behind the car, if you backed up against a brick wall or something in a tight city area, not as much clearance required to open the door behind the car. Now not a ton of cargo room, as you can expect enough room for some groceries, maybe a small overnight bag but, nothing really big if you're going to throw in full sized suitcases or something. But if you do have to occasionally go do a Home Depot run or something, the passenger seat folds down like so, so you can fit in some longer items. Now for so many reasons, the prior generation smart ForTwo's promise as a tiny city friendly car just didn't hold up when it came to drive ability. So we're really keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that this generation improves on a lot of that. We'll find out closer to it's on sale date in fall 2015. So stay tuned. (car trunk closing)
