By Chelsea Rudman

Is that an American Smart in your pocket, or are you just happy you found a car that fits in New York parking spots? Since DaimlerChrysler’s recent announcement that it’s zippy Smart Fortwo will hit U.S. streets in 2008, anyone with a keyboard and Internet connection has put in their two cents about whether or not the European micro-car can succeed on this side of the Atlantic. Naysayers argue that the Smart is too tiny—about 8.5 feet long and 5 wide—to be practical or capable of safely navigating America’s army of SUVs. Times columnist Dan Barry snidely imagined New Yorkers using the mini-minis as jewelry and cufflinks in his July 2 op-ed, “You Call This a Car? We Have Bigger Cockroaches.” Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Barry’s high horse won’t fit into the snug spaces that frustrate many a Jaguar-driving New Yorker—but the Smart will. With gas prices nationally soon to eclipse $4—sounds cheap here, doesn’t it?—and a car that gets 46 miles per gallon in the city, it sounds, well, smart. But, as Marc Babej and Tim Pollak observed in Forbes last week, the four-seater Prius hybrid already bests that by 11 mpg—though at $22,000, it does cost $7000 more than the Smart. Designed with distinctly European problems in mind, the car just looks silly in the U.S. the writers say—we’ve got bigger roads and cheaper gas. Of course, DaimlerChrysler will get the last laugh when a few hurricanes kick our gas prices to European levels. Hey, aren’t hurricanes worsened by…What’s it called? Global warming? And don’t cars make…never mind.