It takes a big man to drive a tiny car. At least that's what I kept repeating as I folded my six-foot-three frame into the metallic-blue Smart ForTwo Passion Coupe — all 106 inches and 1,808 pounds of it.
On the road, American masculinity is defined by two ideals: size and speed. The rogue hormone known as testosterone thrives on horsepower, curb weight, and the cubic footage of cargo beds. So what would it mean to take a Smart, that Swatch-watch-derived icon of narrow European streets and exorbitant fuel taxes — the car that Woody Allen, dear God, crashed in Scoop — onto the streets of Brooklyn, that potholed, SUV-plagued borough that just happens to have some of the country's highest auto insurance rates? How would the newly arrived Smart (the coupe's base price is $13,600), packing a one-liter engine, three cylinders, and a pony-ride-worthy 71 horsepower, fare among the Audis of Brighton Beach and the Escalades trolling Bed-Stuy? By the close of the weekend, would I be answering those e-mails cluttering my in-box inquiring about my girth and size?
From the inside, the Mercedes-produced Smart doesn't feel that small. The legroom is ample, its two seats pitched higher than many other passenger cars, and the windshield and panoramic moon roof (the sections that designers dub "the greenhouse") are huge. All this lulls the driver into forgetting he is piloting a car that is slightly larger than a Hot Wheels.
But New Yorkers were always there to provide a quick reminder of its scale-model stature. "Did that come in a cereal box?" someone cackled. "I've seen toy cars bigger than that," another man offered without solicitation. "You could get to D.C. and back on a tank of gas." (Not quite: The Smart is not a hybrid and gets around 41 mpg on the highway.) Everywhere I drove, the heads of world-weary hipsters and seen-it-all deliverymen whipped around in the wake of my speedy passage, a human Doppler effect. (The small size fools people into thinking you're going faster than you really are, which makes the Smart, at its top range of around 90 mph, look like a bullet.) At a stoplight, a Town Car driver gestured frantically for me to the lower the window. "You guys comfortable in there?" he asked with some concern.
The Smart is the auto equivalent of owning a puppy. Were I single, this would be a plus. In years of driving a Volvo wagon in New York, I've never been approached by a woman (or anyone) as I've rambled along my neighborhood's brownstone-lined streets. In the Smart, it seemed to happen anytime I stopped. I was bonding with people with whom I never would have bonded. Of course, I could have turned plenty of heads in a Lamborghini: Hello, midlife crisis! The Smart, though, just seemed to elicit laughter and general goodwill.
Was all this traffic love just a function of its overwhelming cuteness, what the Japanese call kawaii? Was I, heaven forbid, Hello Kitty on wheels? I decided to put the Smart to the test. I pulled up to the Exotic Auto Boutique, an aftermarket shop near the projects in Gowanus that traffics in 24-inch Lexani rims and DLS Ultimate amps. I asked Benny, the pencil-mustached manager, to take a look. Regarding me suspiciously, he came out to the street and cracked a smile. Soon everyone in the garage was on the sidewalk, gawking over the car. "Yo, you could put a couple twelves" — 12-inch speakers — "in the back," one kid said. "Those rims are three-lugs!" another exclaimed, clutching a Momo steering wheel in his hand. "I've never seen three-lugs." One guy called his girlfriend to come take a look. Another told me how a modded Smart (the Diablo) had bested a Ferrari F430 in a 400-meter sprint. "It had a motorcycle engine in the passenger seat," he said. "It's on YouTube."
