Relay: Not Smart Then But Smarter Now
In the spring of 2012, desperate for a change of scene, I lined up a bartending job in East Hampton and place to stay, but as moving day drew near I had still not addressed transportation. Money was tight, and I wondered if a scooter would do.
The New York Times website had been running an aggressive ad campaign for the two-seat, 106-inch-long Smart Fortwo, at just $99 per month, and I was intrigued. Smart cars had appeared in Brooklyn a few years earlier, and I thought they were fantastic. City blocks were already impossibly crowded, and it seemed that half the population drove grossly oversized and criminally fuel-inefficient sport utility vehicles.
The city-friendly Smart Fortwo fits virtually anywhere and, though the $99-per-month teaser proved misleading, its 41 highway miles per gallon would save me a small fortune.
Time was short; the due-at-signing figure to lease one was low. Thinking that I would need a car for a long summer perhaps, I signed on for the 36-month miniumum.
Those months are in the rear-view mirror now, and I am still here. But, despite the persistent efforts of the good people at Smart Center Manhattan, the Smart Fortwo is not. My no-frills car had taken me near and far, and reliably, but I just couldn’t keep it.
It was just too damn small: I could transport music equipment, or a passenger, but not both. The previous winters had been marked by great vehicular adventures that included sliding across icy roads, searching for the (white) car among snowdrifts, and, once, frantically running alongside and leaping into it as it drove off, in reverse, in an icy parking lot.
But mostly I had grown weary of the wisecracks, the disbelieving stares often followed by laughter at what one onlooker described as a roller skate. As the lease’s expiration neared, I had a decision to make.
For months, I had been poring over the website auto.com, where a seemingly limitless supply of used cars beckoned from across the tristate area. To my surprise, many models I consider luxury were in an almost-affordable range. I searched and searched. Mistakes were made.
Late one afternoon, Cathy and I finally arrived at a “showroom,” the ancillary site of an East Flatbush tire shop, onto which scores of vehicles in various states of function were jammed nose to tail. I was to test drive a 2002 Mercedes-Benz C230. When, after much maneuvering and searching for the ignition keys, the car was finally produced, Cathy had to climb over the seat to get into the back, and, when touched, several interior components crumbled. Needing plenty of work, this once-sporty coupe would not do.
More searching turned up a few promising cars closer to home, however, and one sunny Saturday last month the Smart car delivered us to a dealer in Patchogue. And there she was.
Suddenly, I didn’t want a Mercedes anymore, or even the BMW that had lured me there. No, she was standing next to that one, top down, low and lean, all nautic blue pearl and granite leather — a Volvo C70 convertible.
As I ogled it, the relentless wail of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant filled my head: “Fully automatic, comes in any size / Makes me wonder what I did, before we synchronized.” Talkin’ ’bout love, indeed. Three weeks later, as Memorial Day weekend crowds assembled in East Hampton, I cycled to the train station and bought a one-way ticket to Patchogue.
The day before, Cathy had driven the Smart car to Roslyn, site of the nearest dealer to which it could be returned, and I had followed her in The Star’s van. While I’d seen many a Smart car before, I had never before seen my Smart car, in motion, from afar, and I was mortified. It really did look like a roller skate, one that had somehow escaped the rink, never looked back, and was now single-mindedly weaving through myriad trucks, cars, buses, and trailers on the Long Island Expressway.
“My god,” I thought. “Is that what I’ve been driving for the last three years?”
Christopher Walsh is a reporter at The Star.