I have it on a very reasonable three-year lease, although I locked that in at the end of March 2008. Here in the UK, with petrol now down to a low of $5 per US gallon, it still makes sense to spend on a more efficient car like the smart. If I were in the US, though, I’d pick up one of the small east Asian import hatchbacks over the smart, because the initial outlay wouldn’t really pay back unless I was doing an awful lot of driving.

@ Julia from Nebraska

Uncluttered landscape — I love it! I once spent a thoroughly zen Easter weekend travelling around Finland by train because the entire country closed for Easter…not what I was expecting from a Lutheran country, but it seems everyone goes out into the country to their country house and jumps in frozen lakes and whatnot. I really appreciated the lake-snow-lake-trees-snow-snow-lake-trees-trees-snow-lake-lake literal monotony of white and grey under a bright blue sky.

I’m thinking of doing a road trip that looks something like this…anything in particular I should make sure I take in on the NE leg? A scenic byway or similar?

Some say Nebraska is boring; others might consider it “uncluttered.”

Nice article; I’m a recovering car pig and I’m due for another tidying-up.

A place for everything, and everything in it’s place!

Absolutely. There’s a certain amount of road trip detritus that I can stand, but at some point you’ll always find me pulled up a a service station dragging bottles, papers, old maps and assorted rubbish out of the car. (Often out of the passenger-side footwell if I’m driving solo.)

And I often volunteer to drive because it makes the time pass so much faster!

@Deidra

You’re welcome! I’ve never been to Nebraska, but it’s on my Giant US Roadtrip that’ll take me four or five three-week vacations to do. What should I make sure that I see when I’m traveling in Nebraska?

Yes, the ultimate unclutterer is a fully integrated iPod/GPS stereo system. I chose not to have it installed in my new smart, though, because of the cost and the somewhat frustrating way in which new Apple products sometimes don’t work with old peripherals. (My dad’s new iPhone, which he adores, won’t charge from his dock-with-speakers, for example.)

As a workaround, and because the car is on lease so I can’t mess with the wiring, I use one of those iPod holders that clip into the air vents and a Nokia Bluetooth headset that uses the same 12v charger as my mobile phone.

@Bob

I love my smart’s Aux In jack, because I can just plug in my iPod and go.

When I’m in a rental car, I get along fine with my Griffin iTrip for road trips, although since my iPod and iTrip are last-gen I can’t comment on the current models. You’re right, though, in major urban areas it can get very frustrating to try and find an empty frequency, especially in the US where you can only get odd numbers after the decimal point. (In the UK, we can have 101.2 and 92.4, which makes life a little easier.)

In terms of satisfactory sound, I mostly agree, because I’m a real classical music fiend and I dislike listening to most classical in the car because it loses so much of the bass spectrum. That said, it’s fine for most pop, rock and jazz music.

I tell you, I used to be very frustrated during the years between the phasing-out of car cassette players and the phasing-in of the Aux In jack!

–John at http://voyagers.typepad.com

Luckily the smart still uses a standard stereo and can be changed. Newer american vehicles have car parts in the stereo making it either impossible to change the stereo or very expensive. My wife’s buick needs another $1200.00 in parts to switch the stereo because the dashboard controls are in it.