The history of the car brand Smart

Smart Automobile - is not an independent company, but a division of Daimler-Benz, specializing in the production of cars with the same brand. The headquarters is located in Böblingen, Germany. 

The history of the company originated relatively recently, in the late 1980s. The renowned Swiss watchmaker Nicholas Hayek came up with the idea to create a new generation car that was compact in the first place. The idea of ​​a purely urban car made Hayek think about a strategy for building a car. The basic principles were design, small displacement, compactness, two-terrain car. The created project was called Swatchmobile.

Hayek did not leave the idea, but he did not fully understand the automotive industry, since he was engaged in the production of watches all his life and understood that the released model was unlikely to be able to compete with automobile companies with a long history.

An active process of finding a partner begins among the auto industry industrialists.

The first collaboration with Volkswagen collapsed almost immediately after its conclusion in 1991. The project did not particularly interest the head of Volkswagen, since the company itself was developing a slightly similar project to Hayek's idea.

This was followed by a series of failures from large car companies, one of which was BMW and Renault.

And yet Hayek found a partner in the person of the Mercedes-Benz brand. And on 4.03.1994/XNUMX/XNUMX, the act of consent to partnership in Germany was concluded.

A joint venture called Micro Compact Car (abbreviation MMC) was established.

The new formation included two companies, on the one hand MMC GmBH, which was directly involved in the design and manufacture of cars, and on the other, SMH auto SA, whose main task was design and transmission. The development of the design by the Swiss watch company brought uniqueness to the brand.

Already in the fall of 1997, a factory for the production of the Smart brand was opened and the first model called the Smart City Coupe was released.

After 1998, Daimler-Benz acquired the remainder of the shares from SMH, which in turn made MCC owned only by Daimler-Benz, and soon completely severed ties with SMH and changed the name to Smart GmBH.

At the beginning of the new century, it was this company that became the first enterprise in the auto industry to sell cars via the Internet.

There has been significant model expansion. The costs were enormous, but the demand was low, and then the company felt a heavy financial burden, which led to the integration of its operations with Daimler-Benz.

In 2006, the company suffered financial ruin and went bankrupt. The company was closed and all operations were taken over by Daimler.

In 2019, half of the company's shares were acquired by Geely, through which a manufacturing plant in China was established.

The name “Swatcmobil” invented by Hayek did not interest the partner, and by mutual agreement it was decided to name the brand Smart. Initially, you might think that something intellectual is hidden in the name, since in translation into Russian the word means “smart”, and this is a grain of truth. The name “Smart” itself came about as a result of the merger of two capital letters of the unifying companies with the prefix “art” at the end.

At this stage, the company continues the rapid development and improvement of cars through the introduction of new technologies. And the originality of the design, designed by Hayek, deserves special attention.

Founder

The inventor of Swiss watches, Nicholas Georg Hayek was born in the winter of 1928 in the city of Beirut. After graduating from school, he went to study as a metallurgical engineer. When Hayek turned 20, the family moved to live in Switzerland, where Hayek received citizenship.

In 1963 he founded Hayek Engineering. The specificity of the company was the provision of services. Hayek's company was then hired to assess the position of a couple of large watch companies.

Nicholas Hayek acquired half of the shares in these companies and soon established the Swatch watchmaking company. After that, I bought myself a couple more factories.

He thought about the idea of ​​creating a unique small car with a compact design, and soon developed a project and entered into a business partnership with Daimler-Benz to create smart cars.

Nicholas Hayek died of a heart attack in the summer of 2010 at the age of 82.

Emblem

The company logo consists of an icon and, to the right, the word “smart” in lower case in a gray tint.

The badge is gray and on the right is a bright yellow arrow, which denotes the compactness, practicality and style of the car.

History of Smart Cars

The creation of the first car took place at a French plant in 1998. It was a Smart City Coupe with a hatchback body. Very compact in size and the two-seater model had a rear-mounted three-cylinder power unit and rear-wheel drive.

A couple of years later, an upgraded model with an open top City Cabrio appeared, and since 2007 an adjustment in the name to Fortwo. The modernization of this model was focused on size, the length was increased, the distance between the driver and passenger seats increased, as well as changes in the dimensions of the luggage compartment.

The Fortwo is available in two versions: convertible and coupé.

For 8 years, this model was released almost 800 thousand copies.

The Model K debuted in 2001 based only on the Japanese market.

The Fortwo series of off-road vehicles was produced and introduced in Greece in 2005.

Smart has been released in several limited editions:

The Limited 1 series was released with a limit of 7.5 thousand cars with an original design of the interior and exterior of the car.

The second is the SE series, with the introduction of innovative technologies to create greater comfort: a soft touch system, air conditioning and even a drink stand. The series has been in production since 2001. The power of the power unit was also increased.

The third limited edition is Crossblade, a convertible that had the function of folding glass and had a small mass.