This car probably gets more gawks per mile than it gets miles per gallon — and it gets 50 of those.
Dan and Irene Cyr’s smart car looks as if it has no room for an engine, much less a radiator, power steering pump and air conditioner.
That’s its real name — smart car. It’s so tiny, its name is written entirely in lower-case letters.
The Cyrs (pronounced seers), who live east of Port Angeles, have owned it for about three weeks and have answered about three months’ worth of questions.
Dan’s favorite query comes when he is filling it with gas and someone asks if it runs on electricity.
Other common questions include “What is it?” and “Aren’t you afraid to ride in it?”
The answer to the second query is “No.” The smart car’s advertising shows what happened when it was run head-on into a full-size Mercedes-Benz sedan.
The Mercedes lost.
That’s largely because the heart of the car — what shows as silver in the photos — is designed like a race car cockpit. The smart car’s wheels are placed outboard of the body to provide another buffer.
And it comes with anti-lock brakes, airbags and electronic stability control.
What’s a smart car cost? About $17,000 in France, where it’s manufactured by Mercedes-Benz, and $21,000 in Canada.
Trouble is, smart cars don’t meet all the U.S. Department of Transportation regulations, like the “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear” stencil on its right wing mirror.
However, a Santa Rosa, Calif., firm called ZAP modifies smart cars to meet U.S. standards and sells them at outlets that include the Green Car Co. in Kirkland.
The finished U.S. product costs about $27,000, Dan says.
He says he hasn’t seen any other smart cars on the North Olympic Peninsula, although he knows of an owner in Iowa and another in Pennsylvania.
But there are 600 of them darting about Vancouver Island and 7,000 across Canada.
About 250,000 smart cars have been built since they were introduced in 1998, he says.