During the 1980s Nicolas Hayek (1928–), as chief executive of the conglomerate Swatch Group, reformed the sprawling Swiss watch industry, restoring profit and a sense of desirability to both premium brands and its popular Swatch range. The spearhead of the campaign was the creation of the Swatch watch itself as an affordable, ever-changing fashion brand, made by highly integrated computer design and manufacturing techniques.
Hayek also envisioned a low-cost micro car as a new Swatch product. This would be built in a fresh way to preserve the virtuous Swatch high-speed link from a fermenting graphic and general design department to the production line, spawning an infinitely refreshed range of visually cheeky personal cars, powered, moreover, by an eco-friendly electric or hybrid power source.
An early association with Volkswagen did not work out so in 1994 Swatch and Mercedes-Benz teamed up to build the car. The low cost for the product expected by Hayek proved hubristic, for the mainstream auto industry has had decades of experience of driving down the cost of a complex product to an absurdly low level. There were really no new ways to reduce the cost below that of a conventional Panda- or Polo-sized car. Since the introduction of the Smart, Mercedes-Benz is considered to have lost some $4 billion in the venture. However, it still hopes the range will become profitable and it has achieved something useful by inserting a new micro car type into the traffic ecology of cities. In some ways Smart has paid the penalty of going first – both Fiat’s new 500 and Toyota’s IQ show that those companies also believe there is now potential in this new sub-Mini sector.
The arrival of the Smart is welcome, in the face of the almost irresistible growth in the bulk and weight of personal vehicles. However, it is unlikely that Mercedes-Benz will recover the huge investment that it has taken to install the Smart in our consciousness.