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Factory-Original Smart May Be in US by 2007
7 June 2005
Detroit Free Press. DaimlerChrysler AG might begin selling Smart city cars in the US as early as 2007 if the market and currency conditions allow, said Ulrich Walker, who heads the division.
“The U.S. is attractive for us, and we want to make money there,” Walker said during a briefing with journalists near Stuttgart, Germany. The new Smart ForTwo model, which goes on sale in Europe in 2007, will be built to meet U.S. regulations.
DaimlerChrysler is spending as much as $1.5 billion this year to revamp Smart, including eliminating a third of the unit's workforce and ending production of models in a bid to end losses. Smart has delayed its break-even goal three times and has never met a sales target of 200,000 vehicles a year, set when the car first went on the market in 1998.
Presumably, ZAP’s success in promoting its modifided, imported Smart Car—and the US$1 billion purchase order it is trying to lodge with DaimlerChrysler (earlier post)—might be influencing this stance.
June 7, 2005 in City car | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted by: anonymous | June 07, 2005 at 07:58 PM
chrysler spending up to a billion and a half Dollars to make the smartcar US Compliant??It seems an awful lot of money wasted,just to satisfy those ego-trip Gov.agencies,that got all their regulation Ideas whispered into their Ears by Detroit hired Lobbyists.
Just about all the innovations appearing on US cars where developed abroad and show up years later on our cars,after a lot of resistance, screaming and hollering by our overpaid Execs.
I would think that europe's pollution controls should be more than adequate for us,since the europeans have to deal with a population density 5 to 10 higher per sq mile.Even safety and crashworthyness is not an issue.
time to quit building porkmobiles and quit bombing other nations!!
Posted by: HHN | August 14, 2005 at 05:42 AM
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ZAP's "purchase order" ploy is nothing more than a PR grab to pump up their stock price. that's how they make their money (and selling "franchises" for a brand they do not control...)
AFAIK the Registered Importer that does their conversion work is only allowed to convert 2003 model year Smart ForTwos. They stopped making those ...oh a couple years ago I think.
So even if Daimler/Chrysler agreed to sell them 1 billion dollars worth of 2005 modelyear cars, they couldn't convert them and resell them. Well.. not anytime soon.