Could Smart Build Another Miata Rival? This Time, It's Electric
When Smart introduced the ForTwo before the world panicked over the Y2K bug, the company realized that it had a platform for a fun sports car. A few years later, the Smart Roadster was born, based on the Fortwo platform but stretched to accommodate the sleek styling. It was meant to revive the love for open-top sports cars in the Old Continent, before bowing out in 2005 after over 43,000 units rolled off its French factory.
A Smart Roadster revival would be nice, and apparently, it's entirely possible given that the brand is already preparing a successor to the ForTwo. There's one big catch, though – the Roadster will be entirely different, thanks to Smart's EV-only strategy.
In an interview with Auto Express, Smart UK CEO Jason Allbutt was asked if there's a possibility of a new Smart Roadster given the Fortwo's upcoming turn. Albutt recognized the "particularly good fun" that the convertible brought to the table before, and the UK's love of coupes and top-downs.
"For a country that has more rain than probably any other European market, we are lovers of coupés and roadsters. So yes, I could see a possibility for such a car in the UK," said Albutt.
However, Albutt emphasized that a Roadster revival isn't being planned yet, with the company currently focusing on the Smart #5 SUV and the Smart #6 hatchback. Both vehicles are electric, which follows the brand's strategy.
That said, if – and that's a huge IF – Smart proceeds with the revival of the Roadster, it will likely be battery-powered. It also needs to be lightweight and compact to match the original's driving dynamics, while also incorporating the instantaneous pull that EVs are known for. With an electric Mazda MX-5 potentially sitting alongside an ICE-powered Miata – a car like the Smart Roadster would be a worthy rival.
However, Albutt also expressed his reservations about an electric roadster. Apart from the sensory open-air feeling, he cited that buyers of roadsters typically open their tops to hear the sound of the engine. Of course, this isn't possible with an electric powertrain, though speed won't be a problem given where electric powertrains are these days.
"Maybe there's a new audience that would be looking at [an electric roadster] in a different way. I'm not quite sure yet as to who the buyers of that car really are. It's too early to tell right now, but we'll see."
Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
5 days ago
- Miami Herald
Could Smart Build Another Miata Rival? This Time, It's Electric
When Smart introduced the ForTwo before the world panicked over the Y2K bug, the company realized that it had a platform for a fun sports car. A few years later, the Smart Roadster was born, based on the Fortwo platform but stretched to accommodate the sleek styling. It was meant to revive the love for open-top sports cars in the Old Continent, before bowing out in 2005 after over 43,000 units rolled off its French factory. A Smart Roadster revival would be nice, and apparently, it's entirely possible given that the brand is already preparing a successor to the ForTwo. There's one big catch, though – the Roadster will be entirely different, thanks to Smart's EV-only strategy. In an interview with Auto Express, Smart UK CEO Jason Allbutt was asked if there's a possibility of a new Smart Roadster given the Fortwo's upcoming turn. Albutt recognized the "particularly good fun" that the convertible brought to the table before, and the UK's love of coupes and top-downs. "For a country that has more rain than probably any other European market, we are lovers of coupés and roadsters. So yes, I could see a possibility for such a car in the UK," said Albutt. However, Albutt emphasized that a Roadster revival isn't being planned yet, with the company currently focusing on the Smart #5 SUV and the Smart #6 hatchback. Both vehicles are electric, which follows the brand's strategy. That said, if – and that's a huge IF – Smart proceeds with the revival of the Roadster, it will likely be battery-powered. It also needs to be lightweight and compact to match the original's driving dynamics, while also incorporating the instantaneous pull that EVs are known for. With an electric Mazda MX-5 potentially sitting alongside an ICE-powered Miata – a car like the Smart Roadster would be a worthy rival. However, Albutt also expressed his reservations about an electric roadster. Apart from the sensory open-air feeling, he cited that buyers of roadsters typically open their tops to hear the sound of the engine. Of course, this isn't possible with an electric powertrain, though speed won't be a problem given where electric powertrains are these days. "Maybe there's a new audience that would be looking at [an electric roadster] in a different way. I'm not quite sure yet as to who the buyers of that car really are. It's too early to tell right now, but we'll see." Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
EU-China talks on minimum pricing for Chinese EVs welcomed by Smart CEO Dirk Adelmann
TURIN — The head of German-Chinese electric brand Smart gave a cautious welcome to a potential plan to impose minimum prices on Chinese EVs exported to Europe. The price management system would replace the European Union's tariffs on Chinese battery-electric cars and could help allay fears about subsidized EVs from China flooding European markets. China's commerce ministry said June 7 that talks with the EU on setting minimum prices for Chinese-made electric vehicles have 'entered final stages.' Sign up for the Automotive News Europe Interview of the Month newsletter delivering exclusive interviews with top auto executives. RELATED ARTICLE: Smart #5 midsize electric SUV is a big step up in size, and price, for Mercedes/Geely brand 'Whatever they come to as an agreement will be better than the tariffs we have at the moment,' Dirk Adelmann, CEO of Smart Europe, told the 2025 Automotive News Europe Congress here June 12. 'For us, it will still be a hit, but it will be much more digestible than current tariffs.' Smart is a joint venture between Geely and Mercedes-Benz that builds its electric cars in China. The brand has been hit hard by the EU tariffs that add 18.8 percent duty to the 10 percent already charged on the cars it exports to Europe. Adelmann said the company had to pass some of the cost increase on to customers in the form of a price hike from January. Smart's European sales fell 38 percent to 3,611 in the first four months, according to figures from market analyst Dataforce. Adelmann said he was 'cautiously optimistic' that there will be a negotiated solution to the tariff situation by the end of this year. Minimum prices would be most welcomed by automakers whose cars have a lower landing price. 'It very much depends on your current import value that you have. Some competitors have a rather low import value so there's a much higher benefit to go to minimum pricing versus tariffs,' Adelmann said. The minimum price plan has seen pushback from some Chinese car companies. Philippe Houchois, from Jefferies investment bank, told the Congress: 'It seems like a gift to the Chinese to sell cars at a better price margin, but we hear the Chinese don't want it because they want to be able to sell cheaper cars.' Reform of the tariff system is needed, he added. 'I think it was an ill-defined policy. It took a lot of time, a lot of effort to try to construct something that is not working.' Stellantis-backed Leapmotor, which sells the low-cost TO3 small electric car in Europe, opposes the minimum price strategy, the Financial Times reported. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Times
6 days ago
- New York Times
Her Job Was Real. So Why Did Her Work Feel So Fake?
FAKE WORK: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is a Joke, by Leigh Claire La Berge In some sense capitalism is already behind us. We live here in its fevered midst, to be sure, but a recognition is emerging, especially among younger generations: It isn't sustainable. The devastation of the natural world; the mindless consumerism; above all, the human misery that corporations trawl the world to extract, like ore, from souls as divine as yours or mine. All of it, increasingly, in service to the pathological greed of a few thousand mentally ill men. It cannot last. What comes next may be better, or it may be worse. But it won't be this. 'Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is a Joke,' by Leigh Claire La Berge, offers an early autopsy. Set in the years just before the turn of the millennium, it recounts the time La Berge, now a writer and English professor, spent in the corporate world, helping a Fortune 500 company prepare for Y2K. Her experience was so surreal — capitalism, in its cubicle era, so far from Adam Smith's touchingly simple original conception of it as the propensity to truck, barter and exchange — that the book's tonic note is disbelief. 'Is this how companies are put together?' she wrote at the time, in a draft of an abandoned novel that she quotes throughout 'Fake Work.' 'I find it incredible. These are the things that organize global commerce? Run governments? Fly planes? My second-grade soccer team was more carefully recruited and managed.' Part of the absurdity is circumstantial. Working for a 'sprawling global conglomerate over whose imperial territory the sun never set,' she is seconded to Arthur Anderson, the infamous accounting firm that enabled Enron's crimes. There, she works in the 'burgeoning millennial-preparedness office,' helping to forestall a data catastrophe that the reader knows will never arise. 'On January 1, 2000,' a grave slide deck prepared by the firm dolefully asks, 'will I still have electricity, food, telephone, transportation?' Yet this doubled unreality — a fraudulent firm solving a non-problem — only intensifies the universal elements of La Berge's story. She carefully details the farcical outcomes of corporate policy; for instance, employees have to fly coach if the trip is under a certain distance, so the team conveniently decides that Canada is 'fairly Y2K prepared' in order to fly first class to the Asia-Pacific region instead. And she also tracks, more soberly, the ennui, the dismay, of people doing labor 'so dissociative and diminutive that, for me anyway, the need for bathroom breaks seemed increased in proportion to the amount of it I completed.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
