Smart Cars

Smart was founded in 1994 as a partnership between Mercedes-Benz and Swiss watch company Swatch, with the name itself standing for Swatch Mercedes ART. The goal was radical for its era: build a car so short it could park nose-in to a curb, easy to thread through crowded European city streets. That vision became the original Fortwo, a two-seat microcar that launched in 1998 and quickly became the face of the brand, instantly recognizable by its stubby proportions and tridion safety cell.

For its first two decades Smart stayed true to that city-car mission, expanding the lineup with the four-seat Forfour and eventually shifting the entire range to electric power with the EQ Fortwo and EQ Forfour. Mercedes-Benz took full ownership of the brand in 2019, but the tiny-footprint formula was reaching its limits in markets outside dense European capitals, where buyers wanted more range, more seats, and more everyday usability.

In 2020 Mercedes-Benz and Chinese automaker Geely formed a new 50-50 joint venture to reinvent Smart for a global electric future. The result is a completely different kind of Smart: compact electric crossovers like the Smart #1 and Smart #3, built on Geely's SEA platform and sold with genuine highway range, modern driver assistance, and SUV-style practicality. The old microcars and the new crossovers could hardly look more different, but both generations share the same core idea of smart, efficient mobility for a changing world.