Smart is readying a successor to the Forfour four years after the model went out of production as part of a major model shake-up.
The new four-seat city car will cap a huge overhaul of the Mercedes- and Geely-owned brand’s line-up, which will include the launch of the recently announced #2 city car next year, along with major updates to the #1 crossover and #3 coupé-crossover. They will join the #5 SUV flagship, deliveries of which are set to begin in the coming months.
Revealed to be in the works by Smart’s European CEO Dirk Adelmann at the Munich motor show, the new Forfour, which will take the #4 name, will be designed and engineered for Europe and twinned with the incoming #2, itself a successor to the popular Fortwo.
Given it is in the early stages of development, a design for the #4 has yet to be penned, but Adelmann said it will need to echo that of the previous car while incorporating modern Smart design cues. “It needs to look like a successor,” he added.
This is the same brief as for the recently announced #2, the design for which was confirmed by Adelmann to have been signed off a few months ago by Smart chief designer Kai Sieber.
While the #4 has not yet been fully green-lit, Adelmann said such a car is needed in order to justify the huge cost of creating the #2’s new bespoke platform. “We need the economies of scale,” he said. “The tricky part was to get it small enough for the #2; it’s much easier to expand slightly.”
Adelmann confirmed the platform is likely to use a dual-motor set-up but wouldn’t confirm any other technical details, adding: “The wishlist features we gave to engineering was a very small turning cycle – the same as the last Fortwo – to make [the #2] really practical in city centres.”
In a first for Smart, the platform is being developed jointly by Geely in China and Mercedes in Europe, given that the car is built mainly with a focus on the European market. This differs from the #1, #3 and #5, which were all engineered by Geely but designed by Mercedes.
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