Daimler’s newly-launched Smart ForTwo has made a big splash in the United States in its first month on the market, distributor Penske Auto Group said.
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“We’re really excited about the Smart business,” Roger Penske told Agence France Press (AFP). “We think it’s the right car at the right time.”
Smart USA expects to sell between 20,000 and 25,000 of the fuel-sipping two seaters – launched here in Europe last year – in 2008 and Penske said he was pressing Daimler to ship more vehicles.
Rather than distributing the cars direct itself, Dainler inked a deal with Penske, sharing the cost and risk of launching an entirely new brand in a challenging market from which French (Citroen and Peugeot), Italian (Fiat and Alfa Romeo), English (MG and Rover) and Japanese (Daihatsu) brands have all withdrawn in the last three decades.
Penske Automotive Group is the second largest publicly-traded automotive retailer in the United States, measured by total revenue, and owns and operates 170 franchises in the United States and 145 internationally (including the UK’s Sytner Group, which specialises in luxury brands like BMW), according to its website.
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By GlobalDataAFP noted that the new Smart is the first French-built car sold in the United States in over 20 years. The 68-shop Smart chain opened in mid-January, AFP said.
Around 1,400 Fortwos were delivered in January and the company expects to deliver 1,500 more this month and another 2,000 in March, Penske told AFP.
Penske introduced Smart to US consumers with a nation-wide tour last year aimed at generating interest and demonstrating the car’s reliability on long distances, AFP said. More than 50,000 people took the car for a test drive and 30,000 others attended ‘road show’ demonstrations.
The bulk of the advertising budget has been spent on an internet campaign, Penske told Agence France Press.
Consequently, the start-up costs have been very modest at about $US4m since Smart USA was launched in January 2007, Penske added.
Before the Daimler/Penske deal was agreed, a company called Zap imported a small number of previous-generation ForTwos, sourcing them, just-auto understands, direct from European dealers. These were modified in the US to meet local emissions, safety and lighting regulations before resale.
