Anyone here work in the auto inurance bizz.......? I was about to pull the trigger on a SMART fortwo coupe and made the call to my insurance carrier to check rates. My wife and I have clean records and no reason for surcharges to be applied.....our Mercedes insurance costs $800 a year for the both of us, and the SMART was going to cost $1,800 for the same coverage.......(the damn car only costs $19K) !!!! It is classified in the same rate category as a $90K Mercedes or Porsche apparently according to my broker. A Toyota Echo, VW Golf, or some other small car would have cost the same as my current Benz +/- $100....... So the question is........wazzup with that ? I am not buying one as a result....it's just plain stupid.
could be a few reasons: SMART is owned by Mercedes, so parts costs could be high; they might have a high rate of being totaled in an accident, or a high payout per claim amount; there might be higher than average medical costs per claim due to its size (although they do have pretty solid crash test ratings for its size)
I would agree that the SMART is NOT that smart. Get whacked at 35+ and there is going to be a LOT of damage with injuries. I have no problem with people who want a decent alternative to a gas guzzling pig car or SUV, but like I always say: It's always easy to write a check while laying in a hospital bed to cover the cost of a larger, safer vehicle! I go back and forth in wanting to trade my 4-Runner for a Civic, etc., but what keeps me in the Toyota is the fact that if I get in a moderate speed accident, the chances are high that I'm gonna walk from it Vs being in a car the size of a Civic.
The last two were what I was told by my buddy in the Ins buiz. As small as they are, just about every accident is catastrophic to the car. And most of those kill or seriously injure the driver too, so the payouts are enormous.
The accident thingie as it pertains to injuries is a falsehood. IIHS ratings are exceptional for the vehicle size. Just GOOGLE SMART car crash test to see what I mean. There is a video where they run one at 70 MPH into a concrete barrier and the pax would have survived with very minor injuries. http://www.iihs.org/ratings/ratingsbyseries.aspx?id=632 But the parts replacement costs for low speed impacts, etc, makes sense now that it is mentioned.......if the bits and pieces are pricey that is, or if because it is smaller, more stuff needs to be replaced due to the impact.
I might........but it is such a difference % wise I doubt it will help. Been with my guy for a decade now and he is the most competitive every time I buy a policy. I used to carry my business insurance with them as well.......paid $10K a year in premiums....so he knows I shop around and am a grinder.
Run it into a 6000 lb Tahoe moving in the opposite direction and let me know how the occupants fare. You cannot change the laws of physics.
Perhaps the car falls under a category he doesn't usually deal in {or something similar} I can't imagine all of the people I know who have one paying 250% just to have one to putter around in.
Says who? I've seen a few crash tests on the front and back and their solid, the sides are more at risk but any car is vulnerable when the sides are rammed by the font of another car.
I work at a Mercedes/Porsche/Audi/AstonMartin/Smart car dealership in the collision center. Have repaired 37 Smarts in here for collision repair and not seen 1 total loss. Body parts are not expensive but we do pay shipping on them as opposed to having them stocked in a warehouse stateside. Most panels comes painted so paint repair time time is minimal to none. Have had a couple wacked ones and their structure holds up well. They are made to bounce. None have rolled. Good Buy. Find another quote.
From the IIHS website Important: Frontal crash test ratings can be compared only among vehicles of similar weight. The frontal offset test is at 40mph into a stationary barrier. (two equal weight vehicles colliding at 20) ______________________ The ForTwo rated good in the IIHS frontal test; however, from a physics standpoint an offset accident into a moving full size car or SUV would impart several times the energy into the Smart than the IIHS did. Would not be pretty. A drunk in a pickup striking an oncoming moving Smart at rural highway speeds would certainly be fatal to the occupants of the Smart
Is there not a vid of a Smart and a MB SEL going at it in a full speed offset? IIRC the Smart bounced around like a ball but the structure was not compromised a bit. (can't find the vid- at work and its blocked. boo!)
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... no. Try running anything other than a cement truck into a Tahoe. It will suffer as bad or worse. The fact remains that the Smart is a very safe car. It will survive an accident long after your internal organs have yielded to physics.
While I don't like the Smart, it is an amazingly safe vehicle. When it first hit the streets here in Europe, they did a crash test Smart vs. S class. IIRC, the result was that the occupants of BOTH cars were nearly equally well proteced. (picture from Auto, Motor & Sport iirc) Image Unavailable, Please Login
The smart car collided with a brick wall at 70 mph. What other car can do that and drive away? They do very well head on and rear on. Your post claims that head on collisions are bad... for any car.
Man, I have a VERY hard time believing I'd walk from the above Smart car scenario's. I think it would be easy to find a pool of real, live people for these tests (Prisoners come to mind - a few years off their sentence for each crash?) Vs crash Test Dummies. If the likelihood of walking from moderate force impacts is in fact true, then getting people to do these test in exchange for cash, paid hospital bills may work!
Interestingly, insurance companies hate dealing with Ferrari claims because of diminished value claims, lack of availability of parts while customer is in rental cars and having only approved or certified shops do work. Our oldest car in the shop now is a Ferrari 360 that has been here for 6 months already mostly waiting for insurance company to decide what they were going to do. Never had those problems w/ a Smart.
Four of my friends and I "stole" our other friend's smart by picking it up and moving it around the corner.
Why aren't you just as upset about the $19K price? Seriously, to me, the Tata Nano makes sense -- the Smart car doesn't.