The difficult birth of the original Smart car

Smart recently confirmed that it is creating a new miniature two-seater - the unique proposition for which the brand was invented three decades ago - several years after foraying into electric SUVs.

- KRIS CULMER

The brand had some difficulty in building a business case for the #2 - but even so, its progress through the pipeline has been a lot smoother than that of the original City Coupé.

Autocar first reported on the project in February 1990, and the next summer its instigator, Nicolas Hayek, did a deal with Volkswagen.

The Lebanese-born 63-year-old, who we described as “a rumpled, cigar-chomping management consultant”, was well known as the driving force behind Swatch. Having overseen the liquidation of two Swiss watchmakers engulfed by new competition such as Casio, from 1985 he drastically reduced the number of parts, almost fully automated the production process and took a bold, creative approach to marketing, and by 1990 Swiss watches were outselling Japanese ones by a factor of three.

Hayek described his Swatchmobile to us as a small electric car that could carry “two people and two cases of beer” for a price of £3570 (that’s £8280 today).

“I don’t know cars, just like I didn’t know watches,” he said. “I am just a fat old man who has kept his fantasy as it was when I was six years old.