By Wayne Laepple
WATSONTOWN -- Rick and Tracy Buck were Smart when they recently purchased two new cars.
They bought two Smart Fortwo cars, the popular European car built by Daimler-Benz, at the only dealership in Pennsylvania selling them -- Mercedes-Benz of Devon, 214 W. Lancaster Ave., Devon.
"I'm constantly driving from here to Mifflinburg and Lewisburg," said Buck. "I was looking for energy efficiency."
He seems to have found it in his yellow Smart, which gets 37 miles per gallon.
"Tracy gets 40 miles per gallon in hers, but she does the speed limit," he chuckled, adding, "I try to."
The Smart Fortwo has been all the rage in Europe since they were introduced in 1998. People seem to love their quirky appearance, not to mention the great gas mileage. Over 900,000 have been produced in factories in Germany and France, and they were formally introduced in the U.S. in January 2008.
The car is so small that drivers can squeeze them into parking spaces between other cars. The Bucks often pull both of theirs into a single parking stall on Brimmer Avenue.
The Smart Fortwo, as its name implies, is a two-seater, but it has plenty of leg room and storage space inside.
"It doesn't feel at all like a small car from the inside," said Buck. "It has air bags all around."
The passenger compartment is surrounded by a framework of steel that protects those inside, and the car has front and side-curtain airbags.
Buck and his wife recently drove one of their Smarts to West Virginia, travelling on Interstate highways for part of the distance.
"I was completely comfortable," he said. "I wasn't getting blown off the road by trucks or anything like that."
While on the trip, they encountered heavy rain.
"I was a little scared at first," he recounted, "but it was fine. The car handled well in the rain."
In spite of its tiny size, the Smart has plenty of luggage space. Two suitcases and a guitar fit easily inside behind the seats, Buck said. The luggage space is accessible from a rear hatch, too.
Both Rick and Tracy had seen the Smarties in Europe and were intrigued by them, they said.
"You see them everywhere over there," said Tracy. "When I was in Athens, a very nice gentleman let me look his over, and I fell in love with it. I wanted one."
Rick drives the basic model, the Smart Fortwo Pure, while Tracy has the Smart Fortwo Passion cabriolet. Her car features a one-touch convertible top that can be operated while driving. The door panels and other panels on the cars can easily be removed with a screwdriver, and, according to Rick, some Smart owners trade panels to change the color of their cars.
"You can actually buy different door panels and change the color of the car yourself, if you want," he said.
Both Rick and Tracy are sold on the advantages of their Smart cars.
"We love the good mileage and how easy we can park them," said Tracy. "Truckdrivers wave and give us thumbs up when they see us."
"I don't know why Detroit can't build something like this," said Rick. "You'd have twice the parking, twice the gas mileage. If we started making these, everyone could get back to work."
