Smart Car: The Most Expensive Mercedes Ever Made

In 1993, the man who saved the Swiss watch industry decided to reinvent the car. Nicolas Hayek imagined a cheap, colourful electric runabout that people could personalise like a Swatch—small enough for two passengers, city streets, and, in his words, “two cases of beer.”Volkswagen dismissed it as an elephant’s roller skate. Mercedes-Benz agreed to build it.The result was one of the cleverest, strangest, and most financially disastrous cars ever produced: the original Smart Car. Its steel safety cage could survive an impact with an S-Class, its plastic body panels could be swapped in under an hour, and its tiny footprint allowed it to park sideways in spaces ordinary cars could not use.But beneath the brilliant engineering was a compromised design, a hated gearbox, a near-disastrous stability problem, and a development programme that reportedly cost Mercedes billions.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary history of the original Smart Car: how a Swiss watchmaker’s electric dream collided with decades of abandoned Mercedes engineering, produced an unmistakable automotive icon, and became the biggest money-losing European car programme of the modern era.What’s inside:The Watchmaker Who Wanted to Reinvent Cars:How Swatch creator Nicolas Hayek imagined a cheap, personal electric car—and why Volkswagen rejected it almost immediately.Mercedes’ Secret Microcar Project:The forgotten experiments that Mercedes engineer Johann Tomforde had been developing since the late 1960s.The Electric Car That Became Petrol:Why wheel-hub motors, experimental batteries, and a disastrous frozen-lake test forced Mercedes to abandon Hayek’s original drivetrain.Engineering a Two-and-a-Half-Metre Car:How a rear-mounted engine, staggered seats, plastic panels, and the exposed Tridion safety cell made the Smart unlike anything else on the road.The Rollover Crisis:How the Mercedes A-Class failed the infamous Swedish moose test—and exposed a potentially catastrophic problem inside the Smart just months before launch.The Safest Tiny Car in Europe:Why Mercedes crashed a 730-kilogram Smart directly into an S-Class, and how its rigid passenger cage survived an impact that should have crushed it.The Most Expensive Cheap Car Ever Made:How bespoke components, dedicated factories, glass-tower dealerships, and weak American sales reportedly cost Mercedes around €3.3 billion.Crossblades, Roadsters and a Twin-Engine V6:The bizarre performance cars Smart created while the company was already losing money—including a Brabus prototype with two engines combined into one.The Car Hayek Wanted All Along:How Mercedes eventually removed the petrol engine and hated gearbox, installed batteries supplied by Tesla, and finally created the electric city car Hayek had proposed decades earlier.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies, and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#SmartCar #SmartFortwo #MercedesBenz #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #ElectricCars #NicolasHayek #Swatch #TheCarNerd