PARIS MOTOR SHOW: forstars new smart concept

Smart will launch an all-new concept car in Paris. And the German city-car specialist is hoping you’re old enough to remember nights at the drive-in so you can forget how much bigger its new smart might look.

Instead of backing your station wagon into a parking spot, hanging a speaker over the window and running around to sit in the luggage area, smart’s forstars concept car takes the drive-in with it.

forstars is built on a far bigger platform than the current smart and boasts a silhouette that hints at the shape of the fortwo’s successor, due in a year. All of the forstars’ trivial tinsel might hint at continued cuteness, but it boasts a much bigger footprint than the current fortwo.

It’s an astonishing 855mm (more than 30 per cent) longer than the little fortwo at 3550mm. And it’s 151mm wider as well, stretching its footprint out to 1710mm.

Its wheelbase has been pushed out by more than 24 per cent (a whopping 603mm longer!) at 2470mm. That's just 229mm shorter in its wheelbase than the all-new A-Class Mercedes-Benz five-door hatch.

It’s also wider, with its front track stretched 193mm to 1475mm and its rear track bumped out 90mm to the same width. In fact, the only dimension that shrinks on the smart forstars is its height -- which is trimmed 35mm to 1505mm.

Beneath it all, the forstars is powered by the same all-electric drivetrain lifted from the current Brabus smart electric, which means a 60kW magneto-electric motor. It’s enough to power the forstars to 130km/h thanks to 135Nm of instant torque and a 17.6kW/hour battery.

Yet smart isn’t relying on solid engineering advancements to garner public attention. Instead, it’s given the forstars a built-in video projector so it can be parked in front of any clean wall to make an instant drive-in theatre.

Slung beneath a faux bonnet intake that apes hotshot performers like Subaru’s WRX, the forstars movie projector can be operated by either a smartphone or via Bluetooth.

Smart has christened it the forstars because of its convex curved glass roof that exposes the night sky but there are other reasons why parent company Daimler christens it its first Sports Utility Coupe (SUC).

Firstly, the forstars shares its origins with the for-us concept car smart shown at January’s Detroit motor show, so it also shares its glass tailgate. The electrically operated tailgate slides down to create a 900mm-long tailgate area – almost long enough to make yourself comfortable in a traditional Drive-In movie theatre.

The seats are hammock-style units, developed at Mercedes-Benz’s Lake Como studio in Italy, which can be switched in and out with different colours as the owner’s mood changes. And the interior’s radical thinking doesn’t stop there, with the rear-view mirror replaced entirely by a cradle for a smart phone, which displays footage from a rear-view camera.

Sitting on an enormous set of 245/35 ZR21 Michelin tyres, the two seater keeps delivering kookiness outside as well as in. The right-side taillight flips open to give access to the plug-in charging socket while, astonishingly, smart created space for a large drink bottle holder in the left-side taillight.

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