After more than 25 years, Mercedes-Benz has ended production of the Smart Fortwo

At the end of this past March, the last unit of the Smart Fortwo rolled off the assembly line at the Hambach plant in France, bringing this city car finally into history after more than 25 years on the market. According to the company itself, this last unit was the fully electric cabrio version.

It was at the end of 2020, more than 3 years ago now, when Mercedes-Benz announced that it would sell the Hambach plant, which had until then been dedicated to producing the Smart, to the company Ineos. As part of the purchase agreement, the latter has continued producing the Smart until this past March. From now on, however, Ineos will dedicate the plant entirely to the production of its own vehicles.

In relation to this fact, a representative of Smart has confirmed that, as planned, production of the Smart EQ Fortwo in its cabrio and coupé variants came to an end at the end of last March 2024. However, the end of the Fortwo may have arrived even sooner had it not been for some contacts between Mercedes-Benz and Ineos aimed at slightly delaying its definitive farewell.

A true veteran

The Fortwo was originally designed in the 1990s to be an exclusively electric vehicle from the outset; however, it eventually reached the market with a combustion engine, only for that to be replaced by an electric propulsion system a few years ago. Although Mercedes-Benz sold several million units of the Smart Fortwo, it never became a truly profitable model for the company. This was precisely the reason why the German manufacturer decided on a change of direction, creating in 2019 a joint venture together with the Chinese giant Geely, transferring the Smart brand to this project.

In this way, and following the sale of the Hambach plant to Ineos, all Smart models will be produced by Geely in China and imported from there into the European market. The new Smart currently has two models in its lineup, both fully electric, the #1 crossover and its coupé version, the #3.