Smart Car Finance – New or Used Smart Car
Looking to buy a new/used Smart Car? Need Smart Car Finance?
Whether you’ve found the right Smart car already or are still looking, The Car Loan Warehouse is in a great position to arrange Smart car finance at competitive rates.
We’re happy to approve customers for finance before they actually find the Smart car in question, leaving them free to shop with the peace of mind that they can quickly complete the purchase when satisfied.
A unique service we also offer is the ability to provide Smart car finance for private sales. This is something we have developed over some time and it’s proving extremely popular with customers as there are several benefits associated with private sales.
Applying for Smart car finance is quick and simple. Our online car finance application takes 3 minutes to complete and one of our skilled car finance advisors will be in touch as quickly as possible so you can start searching for the right Smart car.
Smart Car, A Brief History
Smart Automobile known principally as Smart Car is part of Daimler AG, the company that own Mercedes-Benz. They specialise in making small cars. The brand logo incorporates a letter “c” for “compact” and an arrow for “forward thinking”.
The idea behind the design started with Nicolas Hayek, the CEO for SMH, the Swatch watch makers. He envisaged the same personalisation and quirkiness the watches had extended into cars. Hayek’s private company Hayek Engineering AG started the design for the new car with seating for two and a hybrid engine.
In 1991 SMH reached an agreement with Volkswagen to share the development of the new project. Before long Hayek suspected that VW would end the agreement so he cautiously began accosting other car companies with the “Swatchmobile” project. He reached an informal agreement with Daimler-Benz AG, the makers of Mercedes-Benz cars, and a deal was announced in March 1994 that the companies would join forces in founding Micro Compact Car AG (MCC). Daimler-Benz did not like the name “Swatchmobile” or “Swatch Car” and pushed for a neutral name – Smart was finally settled upon, an acronym of Swatch Mercedes Art.
More capital needed to be put into the company which was fronted by Daimler-Benz, increasing their share of ownership to 81%. In October 1998 the Smart car was launched in nine European countries, however Hayek was not entirely happy with the final design. He continued to push for a hybrid engine to no avail. Shortly afterward Daimler-Benz bought SMH’s remaining shares giving them full ownership of MCC.
Smart’s solution to being small, and therefore vulnerable is the Tridion steel safety shell. This is a steel “cage” in which the interior of the car is enclosed. “Top Gear” conducted a 70 mph crash test with the Smart Fortwo and it revealed that the body of the car remained mostly intact. The Tridion frame also gives the quirkiness to the vehicle as most of the frame shows through to the outside of the car. The rest of the body is made up of panels that are simple to change so that owners can change the colour of their car when desired.
