Two extremes of automotive engineering

By James Werrell - jwerrell@heraldonline.com

My daughter, on a whim, recently rented a Smart Fortwo car for a trip from Washington, D.C., to North Carolina. Going 65 mph, she and her husband decided maybe it wasn't such a smart idea after all.

I doubt, however, that they would have traded up for a Hummer.

I was thinking of these two extremes in the world of automotive conveyance, both a bit ridiculous in their respective ways, as I read about the Hummer brand being sold by General Motors to the Chinese. This one-time American icon now will be made by Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery.

I have to be careful what I say about Hummers. Friends up the street drive one, I'm sure because of its many safety features.

Others, however, may have been attracted by the swaggering bulk of these monster vehicles, originally made for the U.S. Army but modified for civilian use in 1992. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was among the first to buy one, and future customers no doubt found it cool to own the same car as the one driven by the Terminator.

The Hummer was the apex of the American love affair with gas-guzzling beasts of the road. At $42,000 to $63,000, they were as pricey as a sleek luxury vehicle but also brawny enough for just about any challenge the American car owner could devise — from carting the kids to soccer camp to hauling groceries home from the store to braving a trek to the golf oourse.

While just buying one is a strain on the bank account, so is owning one. These cars officially get 14 mpg in the city and 18 mpg on the highway.

I bet it's more like 10 mpg, and you find yourself stopping every few blocks for a fill-up. But, hey, gas used to be cheap and driving a car built like a Sherman tank was fun.

But when the price of gas started rising, I could envision Hummer owners across the nation slapping themselves on the forehead and muttering, “What in the world was I thinking?”

That brings us to the Daimler-Chrysler Smart Fortwo. This tiny car reportedly gets 33 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway.

And that is believable, considering the car must weigh no more than a sack of potatoes. The name also seems apropos because I don't see how owners could stuff anything more than two medium-sized people into it.

“Most people don't take these out on the highway,” the guy at the car rental center told my daughter. She found out why when they took it out on the highway.

She reported that the sensation was like going very, very fast in a go-cart. A large truck passing them or a gust of wind would make the little car swerve.

Granted, a car like that might be a joy to drive in a crowded city where parking spaces are rare. You allegedly can park a Smart car with its snub nose facing the curb and still not stick out farther than a conventional car.

But, frankly, when going 65 mph, I want a little more car around me than that.

The manufacturer and enthusiastic owners insist that the Smart cars are perfectly safe, pointing to high crash-test ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A reinforced steel skeleton surrounding the passenger pod can withstand huge impact without severe damage. Plus, the little cars are chock full of airbags.

But you can watch a video on the Internet of an offset crash at 40 mph between the Smart Fortwo and a Mercedes Benz C-Class. Let's just say, in a real-life situation, you would rather be in the Mercedes.

The Smart car may be loaded with safety features, but it can't entirely defy physics. When a small object hits a large object at a high rate of speed, the big object usually wins.

Let me amend that: When two modern cars with advanced design and safety features collide, the larger car often sustains less damage. But even a Smart car is much safer than the big old Detroit land boats folks drove in the '50s and '60s.

It seems that there is a penchant in America to swing wildly from one extreme or another. Now that the price of gas is high and the romance with SUVs has cooled, suddenly we want cars the size of a coffin that get 100 mph.

For now, I guess I'll stick with a car that falls somewhere in the middle — medium-sized, reliable, comfortable, OK mileage, safe enough.

But my next car could be a Chinese electric Hummer.