Smart Car sales hit 2 million – but it’s taken 18 years

Eighteen years after Daimler and Swatch revealed their take on a city car, the smart car – in all its iterations – has now sold more than two million units.

The Smart car – or ‘smart’ without a capital letter, as Daimler prefer – has had an incredibly chequered past as its take on urban transport struggled to make a real, or certainly profitable, impact on the car buying public.

But Smart has survived all its trials and tribulations and has now managed to pass the two million sold mark, a remarkable achievement for a company which has probably never turned a profit.

Conceived in 1992 by Swatch watches, the idea was to build a funky, individual, compact city car which owners could personalise in the way they could Swatch watches.

Initially the Smart, as it became, was to be a joint development between Swatch and VW, but when VW opted to pull out Swatch convinced Mercedes to take their place, and the Smart was born.

Originally due to  launch at the start of 1998, Smart had the same issues with stability as the original Mercedes A Class, and launch was put back by six months so Mercedes could lower the centre of gravity, widen the track, stiffen the suspension and make the Smart capable of passing the notorious Swedish Moose Test.

From an initial 51/49 split of ownership, the development costs meant Mercedes (Daimler) ended up with 81 per cent by the time Smart launched, and shortly after Smart GmbH become a wholly-owned Daimler subsidiary.

The original models were a Smart City Coupe and City Cabrio (which would eventually become the ForTwo), a Smart Roadster in 2003 and electric models followed on too.

But Smart continued to lose money hand over fist, racking up losses of four billion Euros by 2006, at which point it was absorbed in to Daimler so we have no real idea of what it’s cost Mercedes since.

But in many ways, Smart was an idea ahead of its time, and its compact size, fun (ish) drive and low (ish) running costs are now very much on the Zeitgeist, although its rather strong price is still an obstacle.

Still, with new Smart ForTwo and For Four models – including Brabus versions – now on the road, electric versions of the whole smart range just launched and sales for Smart booming in China and elsewhere, perhaps, finally, Daimler may be able to recover some of the billions they’ve lost to date.