Stephen Bayley

Once, smart was smart. Now it's less so

- Stephen Bayley

The original smart was one of the great car designs. I know, as Wittgenstein said, whereof I speak: I had four in succession. Every time I used one, I smiled. It was rather as Harley Earl described the designer's mission: when you get into a car, it should feel like going on vacation. The idiosyncratic lower case 's' was mandated in the stylebook, typical of this miniature would-be disruptor. The smart was completely original and had neither precedent nor influence. smart's ultimate commercial failure is a dismaying indictment of the unfolding calamity that is the European motor industry. Its successor, an ugly Godless 'mobility system', is made in China.

Idiosyncrasies in 1998 included very peculiar handling. It is perhaps the only rear-engined car with profound understeer. On some pre-production cars they even experimented with ballast to correct its waywardness, a quirkily defiant snub to the engineering grail of lightness. Gordon Murray, also an owner, told me that the handling could be fixed by changing the sizes of the wheels, but I never did this because I am mechanically inept and, besides, I could not remember whether Gordon had advised putting larger wheels on the front or the back.