Smart car history
Smart (Swatch Mercedes Art for) is a German company and a brand of Mercedes-Benz created in 1996 with the help of Swatch Group.
The company built Smart car range Erlangen small, lightweight, low consumption of place in the city, fuel and emit low greenhouse gas emissions. Initially it must have a car to use in rental systems or shared cars.Smart cars are produced at the plant in Hambach in France.
* Spring 1990. Building on the success of the Swatch, its inventor Nicolas Hayek, CEO of the Corporation for Microelectronics and Watchmaking (SMH), wants to replicate this concept in the automotive industry. A crazy dream: the Swatchmobile must use electric motors placed in the wheels and benefit formulas revolutionary rental.
* Summer 1991. Its board under his arm, Nicolas Hayek tries to convince automakers. Many, including PSA and Renault, refused to close the deal seems too risky. Volkswagen is the glove. Both partners are launching SwatchVolkswagen.
* January 1993. Volkswagen frightened withdraws from a case finally deemed insufficiently profitable or risky. Nicolas Hayek meeting the world's leading manufacturer, General Motors, which declined the offer. The watchmaker is tenacious. The Mercedes Benz Group who wishes to produce smaller cars put on the Swatchmobile. The joint venture is owned 51% by the German group and 49% by the Swiss watchmaker. Nicolas Hayek is now a minority, but his dream will come true.
* October 1997. Inauguration of the plant Hambach (Moselle) by Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl. Nicolas Hayek improvises a press conference at the entrance to the room where the boss of DaimlerChrysler holds his own. Clearly the burning cloth between the project partners.
* July 1998. Start the City-Coupe (two seats) will become more recently the Fortwo. The car is finally not as revolutionary as Nicolas Hayek would have liked.
* November 1998. DaimlerChrysler takes full control of MCC. Withdrawal of Nicolas Hayek. It's the end of the adventure for the designer of the car.
* September 2002. Launch of the roadster to be abandoned after 43 000 models only. Six months later the 500 000th out of Smart Hambach. In April 2004 has launched the four-door version (forfour). It is manufactured in Holland in collaboration with Mitsubishi.
* April 2005. Daimler announces plan to reduce costs. 700 jobs were eliminated or third plan. The Hambach site is only partially spared 50 workers were transferred in 2004 on the site where Rastatt Mercedes produces "Class A" and a social plan for 40 people is operated from December 2005. The arrival of Dieter Zietschke head of the DaimlerChrysler Group in late 2005 accompanied by a radical economic policy which also applies to smart: no more voluntary departure is not the subject of a replacement since October 2005.
* End 2006. The development site in Germany is smart dissolved and its staff are partially integrated with Daimler. A Hambach, production is stopped 5 weeks to prepare to produce the replacement for the ForTwo: the 451 (code name for the 2nd generation ForTwo). Longer than 20 cm as above, it is designed to penetrate the U.S. market.
* March 31, 2007. Check concession in the new smart fortwo, on which rests the future of the brand.
* With a further increase in oil prices and the financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009, small cars saw their popularity rise, including from Governments must prepare for the post-Kyoto. Smart tested (from 2006 to 2008) a kind of carbon card (Mastercard involving DaimlerChrysler Financial Services and HBOS Card Services) as environmental partner with the Woodland Trust for the application of activated carbon offset by uses of credit cards (5 trees planted in the activation of the card, supposedly offset the equivalent of 6,000 miles traveled Smart
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