I saw that we had a Smart ForTwo lined up for the week and no one had signed it out. Why not? After perhaps 100 yards I’d come to the conclusion that the Smart is perhaps the worst new car I’ve ever driven. Wait a second, why am I saying perhaps? It’s without question the worst. Oddly, that’s the same conclusion I came to three years ago when I first drove a ForTwo. Poor Smart. The ForTwo looks good, has great packaging, a roomy interior, enough power for such a tiny little guy and good enough handling. Yeah, the ride’s pretty rough, but it’s not a deal breaker. The transmission, however, is a brand breaker.
In case you’ve never A) driven a Smart B) talked to anyone that’s every driven a Smart C) read a review of a Smart, here’s what’s up. The U.S. spec ForTwo comes with exactly one transmission option and it’s lousy. It’s a five-speed clutchless, automated manual that feels as if it breaks every time it shifts. Let me repeat that: every time the transmission goes from gear to gear, you think the car is broken. Why? Because it takes over a second to change gears. Your foot is flat, you want to go forward, and nothing at all happens, save for you slowing down when you want to be speeding up. It’s miserable, pathetic, horrifying and (probably) worst of all, dangerous. Especially when you’re trying to dart into a traffic-hole and the transmission won’t let you.
The ForTwo is undeniably cute, however. Not cute enough to forgive the crap cogswapper, but pretty cute. So cute that even though I’m ready to jump out of the thing while it’s moving, several of my fellow Angelenos can’t take their eyes off it. Children wave, adults mostly stare, though some sneer. While not written down anywhere, everybody knows that in Los Angeles, the car that attracts the most attention wins. Especially if you adhere the Charlie Sheen/Lindsey Lohan philosophical mindset: there is no bad PR. Still, as I was leaving a parking structure in Downtown L.A., two homeless guys walked in front of the ForTwo. The one not pushing a shopping cart yelled, “Man, I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.” Ouch.
Fast forward to next day at lunch and we’re waiting in a giant line near Sepulveda trying to into an In-N-Out. Only I’d traded the Smart for a burnt orange Bentley Continental GT. A few of us from the office piled inside the new Conti to A) go get some shakes B) take a $215,000 silly-mobile through a fast food drive-thru. Who isn’t interested in the differences between the outgoing Bentley GT and the new one (and of course experience the full thrust of the reworked 567 horsepower twin-turbo W16 between the red lights)? Well, my colleagues could have cared less. They were just in it for the dark blue leather with contrasting orange stitching. And the milkshakes.
And we’re just sitting in there in front of In-N-Out, not moving. I mention this because there’s a homeless couple with a sign standing at the entrance to the parking lot, asking for food/money and none of us has any cash on us. I’m mortified, staring straight ahead, doing my utmost not to make eye contact. Not that I’m in the habit of giving money to people standing on the street asking for it, but I’m behind the wheel of a Bentley, a loud and obviously hyper expensive one. I just felt awful. But here’s the thing — the homeless couple couldn’t have cared less; they didn’t ever glance our way. In fact, no one so much as looked at us, save for one head-nodding dude in a convertible Mustang. Our editor-in-chief Angus MacKenzie is fond of saying, “Mercedes-Benz is the Chevrolet of Orange County, and Bentley is the Mercedes-Benz of Beverly Hills.” And he’s right. We’re doing 0-70-0 from every stop light for three miles in a 5,000 pound hunk of cheddar and nobody bats an eye or turns a head. Only in Los Angeles.
That same night I take home our long term Nissan Leaf, the second all-electric car I’ve driven in Los Angeles. The first, a Tesla Roadster, nearly stopped traffic. Everyone pointed, looked, waved and had questions. One guy in an E60 M5 chased me down a few blocks from UCLA. He had to know how the $110,000 electric sports car drove. The Leaf? Not so much. Much to my amazement, no one really seemed to care. Why amazement? Well, this is L.A., home to the popularization of the green movement, the Prius explosion and every other new agey thing that’s ever happened (the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson sold vitamins from a drive-thru at his Topanga Canyon home).
Still, the Leaf’s a revelation insomuch as it’s not unordinary in any memorable way, funny fishy-shape notwithstanding. It reminds me of the Honda FCX Clarity in terms of its unremarkableness. The Leaf drives just like any other basic piece of automotive transportation you’ve ever driven. It’s quiet but not silent, adequately quick but not fast, comfortable but not luxurious – it’s just a normal car. Except that when it’s low on juice, you plug it into a wall. I took my wife out to dinner in the Leaf, and spent a moment showing the valet how Nissan’s electric car works. “That’s an electric car? Weird,” she said. Why so weird, I asked? “It’s just so… normal. I mean, it’s kind of boring.” Yup, and not only in Los Angeles.
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