Happy tenth birthday to the smart fortwo

The smart fortwo is produced in a purpose-built plant in the French town of Hambach – a clear commitment to Europe as a production location. The smart plant, also called "smartville", started production in 1997. System partners located on site supply partly prefabricated modules straight to the assembly line. In some cases they fit their prefabricated modules in the smart themselves. This has enabled transport and logistics costs to be reduced to a minimum. Flexibility, just-in-time and minimum delivery times at all levels are among the exemplary aspects of the process. This enables the smart fortwo to be assembled in only about three hours.

Success story – ten years of the smart fortwo

As early as the early 1970s developers at Mercedes-Benz started working on the "car of the future" and considering new revolutionary approaches that eventually led to the concept of an ultra-compact car two and a half metres long. Several years passed until the pioneering safety concept was developed that allowed the high level of safety typical of Mercedes to be realised in an extremely short car.

In 1989 Nicolas G. Hayek, the inventor of the Swatch watch, announced plans to launch a small city car on the market. To realise this idea Nicolas Hayek turned to Mercedes-Benz as an experienced partner. Together, both partners founded Micro Compact Car AG with headquarters in Biel, Switzerland.

Finally, in 1997 the smart city coupé celebrated its world premiere at the Frankfurt International Motor Show. Production and sales started in 1998. In the same year, smart became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG (now Daimler AG).

Further models and series

In the following years the smart brand launched the sports cars smart roadster and smart roadster-coupé (2003) and the four-seater smart forfour (2004) on the market. Following the decision to stop production of the smart roadster at the end of 2005 and of the smart forfour mid 2006, smart fully concentrated on the smart fortwo.

The innovative car brand has demonstrated its creative energy time and again with special vehicle models. These include the smart crossblade in 2002 that had neither doors, a roof nor a windscreen, and the smart crosstown show car in 2005 which was equipped with forward-looking hybrid drive.

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