A college roommate had one of these; he bought it new (he had the means). He let me drive it a couple times. It was a major hoot, I tell you. Just a blast.

My Matrix gets 35 on the highway. My 89 Betretta got 40. My 83 Renault got in the 40s. That Renault was at least as slow as the Smart, but I could sort of carry four people, if two of them had short legs.

I remember seeing dozens and dozens of these in the snow belt town were I grew up during the days these were being unloaded off the boats. I saw so many of them that I ceased to see them. I even ceased to see their rusted rear quarters, since every one of these had them.

In 1970s TV dramas, leading men drove cars like these.

@zacarious: I remember riding in a very early Escort at the time. You could hear the gas sloshing around in the tank. The dash and interior trim all looked like government surplus. My butt was numb after a half hour in the passenger seat. The car wallowed around every turn and the engine strained hard during…

Sweeeeet!

Why wasn't this the first car in the JFG?

That truck is just gorgeous. The owner has my serious respect for driving it daily and keeping it in such good nick.

That side window glass is just awful! Whoever at GM thought this was a good idea...

An ill-built beast, to be sure, but gotta love them sugar-scoop headlights.

Every time I think there's too much coverage of auto shows, you post something like this, and I remember why I put Jalopnik in my reader in the first place!

I liked Jalopnik at first because it was clever, but I first loved Jalopnik when Murilee started DOTS.

@slantsick: No, that nose was outsourced to American Motors. Think Spirit.

Yeah, let's put a rounded plastic nose and a deep, smoked backlight on a car with creases so sharp you can cut your fingers on them and call it Aero! Yeah, everybody will be fooled by that.

I think '42 was the year the fenders flowed back into the doors across the GM line. Well, Cadillac might have had this earlier, I can't remember.

Is it possible to fix the content system or whatever so that certain posts don't jam all the way to the left, requiring us to select the text so we can read the parts of it obscured by the blue bar?

@Murilee Martin: And to think I was about to say, "Why the hell don't you just knock on these peoples' doors and ask them to put their cars on the street for five minutes so you can snap pics?"

Oh man, this is great. My grandmother had an orange '72 in the day. I spent many happy hours riding around southwestern Michigan in it. Back before seat-belt and child-seat laws, I'd even ride around in the wayback, looking out the back window on my knees.

@ranwhenparked: A friend of mine had one of these (in the late 80s) and let me borrow it several times. It was a super nice little car. It was comfortable and had decent power. And I'll never forget that gentle ding-dong, ding-dong sound when you left your lights on (or was that left your key in the ignition when you…

@Mink66: We had a '74. White over white. Black interior. It rocked.