Frankfurt Motor Show

Smart changes tack with the Crosstown urban show car

It took the Smart designers and engineers just 6 months to construct the Crosstown show car displayed to the public at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The concept was created while working on ideas for the replacement of the firm's ForTwo city car, but is not likely to offer anything more than a cursory indication at what that car will look like.

Despite its chunky mud-plugging tyres and Willys Jeep inspired folding windscreen, the natural habitat for the Crosstown is very much the urban jungle, and the target audience is very young. Emphasising this is a funky new interior featuring aluminium pedals inspired by mountain bikes, and what looks like skateboard wheels on the window winders and gear stick. The dashboard is perhaps a more conventional shape than the current ForTwo's, as it has been designed with US legislation in mind (closer to production than it looks?), but it incorporates some neat new bits, such as the PDA and USB key docking station in the middle, and a huge lockable storage compartment stretching from the passenger's door to the centre of the car.

The Crosstown looks far better with the electric roof folded back (as on the ForTwo Cabrio) and the windscreen folded forward out of sight under the bonnet. In this guise it takes on the role of modern day beach buggy and wouldn't look out of place on the coast in fashion conscious California. Out its roof and windscreen in place though and the Crosstown begins to look a little awkward, with its utilitarian cool being lost to the appearance of one of those horrible two-stroke mini-cars you see in some European cities.

Style aside, the Crosstown body hides a petrol-hybrid powerplant, which does add weight, but still manages to produce less emissions and drinks less fuel than the equivalent petrol car. There are no plans to produce the hybrid drivetrain as yet, but it has been developed as a runner so there is no doubting that the thought has crossed Smart's mind.