.....the new A class Merc which will share underpinnings with the new Smart ForFour..........
And we all know what happened last time....the ForFour was thought to be too much of a competitior to the A Class...
Similarly the ForMore....which used the chassis and running gear of it's 'competitor' the E Class.
Though the ForMore had better styling and interior...something Merc weren't happy with,
and which added another nail to it's coffin.
Merc don't view it the same way as VW.....who sell 'badge engineered' Audi's, VW's,
SEAT's, and Skoda's that share the same parts<br />and compete with each other.
If you buy a Skoda and not an Audi/VW/SEAT you have still bought a car from the
same group/company.
Merc should learn a lesson from that.
I'd never heard of the Formore but just googled it and if the images are accurate I think that was a huge miss by Merc.
The ForMore was production ready when it was axed, there are pictures of a pancake of 5 or 6 ForMores !
I think the rumours of the next gen A-Klasse and ForFour might be true this time the
economic climate is so rough that any cost saving measures need to be taken. The
A-Klasse is a baby Merc and a cheap one at that, so would make sense for the Clio,
ForFour, A-Klasse and Micra to share the same tech.
From the articles that have circulated recently it looks like it will be the Twingo, Pixo,
and ForTwo will all be the same, save for the badge and very modest styling tweaks.
The Micra, Clio and ForFour (possibly the A-Klasse) will all be the same. This will kill
the Smart brand for good, they shot themselves in the foot with the ForFour and Colt.
You could either have a high spec Colt for £8k or a similarly spec ForFour for over
£10k.. hmm... so if you have a Twingo at £5k, a Pixo at £5k and a ForTwo at £7k,
which one would you choose ?
And if you think VAG is bad at sharing platforms and cars, I have been looking at
replacing my ForFour with a Japanese oddity - this is what my delving found...
the humble Yaris can be found as a Toyota Will, Daihatsu Materia, Daihatsu Siron,
Toyota Vitz, Scion xB, Toyota bB... the list goes on including various drivetrains and
n/a and turbo'd units of the same engines found in a big standard Yaris.