Smart Bomb

Tech in automobiles is exciting - to me and about a few billion others throughout the world. Incorporating the latest engine tweaks, suspensions, aerodynamic forms and links to a broader tech-world are fascinating to men & women everywhere - a soccer that even Americans slavishly follow and crave.

When it became clear that SMART, those real teeny sideways-parking "cars" were coming to the USA, I was excited for two reasons.

First, a Eurocar with an amazing compact styling was deemed saleable to a US audience.
Second, our German newspaper (yes the Amerika Woche) could be at the lead of the newsrush and potential advertising bonanza a new Mercedes line implies.

So now, February 2008, I see some SMARTs on the road, not too many actually, and while I am curious, I don't crane my neck too harsh an angle, nor do I see passers-by do anything similar.

Few adverts are filtering into my domains (webpages, occasional TV show, radio) and a lack of buzz reminds me of the strange honeybee disappearance from last year.

Perhaps in a stalling economy, SMART is biding its time until macro conditions and housing disasters settle foundationally - but wouldn't the great gas mileage be a huge selling point in these days of Middle East War and more importantly to most - high gas prices.

Turns out, the SMART isn't quite so magnificient with gas mileage, not like a motorcycle getting 100MPG, nor is its base selling price all that inexpensive. Combined with minimal internal space, little peppiness and Americans fear of traversing the road with anything less than a HUMMER, serious public realtions are in order.

We, at Amerika Woche, have written, called, pleaded to let us bring some spin where possible and reasonable - including an offer for review, available dates, dealership locations, etc.

Not one peep back.

Any potential advertising bonanza, or perhaps a classified advertising some after-market parts, ahs to date not materialized.

Sadly, and I don't know why I thought this product would be different, I believed that SMART would reach out to the German-Austrian-Swiss community and seed loyal emigrants with at least a token word or two about their Teutonic-creations. Instead, like Lufthansa, BMW, Siemens, et al - the silence booms and shudders. "We couldn't care less about you."

We accept it, move on and ponder why this policy of non-Germanness is thoroughly ingrained and considered reasonable.

Other European countries support their communities in the USA, for positive public relations and ultimately to better their economic and cultural interests. The giant German industrial base along with German governments consider German-Americans to be an anachronism, just fine enough for feeding with an occasional Bach concerto, 300-year-old opera or re-re-reading of Goethe's Werther. If you're lucky.

Smaller German companies - such as the airline LTU - support us, and we in turn them, by informing our readers of their progress, their great services and business decisions. (Air Berlin recently bought LTU - which should drop transatlantic flight costs even further, and increase the number of cities one can fly direclty into.) I only hear anything about Lufthansa when a reader writes in to say how horrible their service is these days.

So with great regret, I think the SMART will not do well in this US market. Not just out of spite for spurning us, but because their marketing execution and product offerings are silly, overpriced and plain wrong for the USA in 2008.

I am in the market for a compact car in the Spring, and I think I may try a hybrid of sorts (American based, German entrenched) - a 2009 Ford Focus.