smart car?? Good idea!?

no

get a Honda Fit

much better ride more for the money.

1. Honda Fit (base) - $15,385

unless you find a used one you'll have to wait a year to get a smart car.

First off, a car is never a good investment.

You're definitely going to lose at least a few thousand or more on the Sonata if you sell it or trade it in, so when you consider that it may or may not be worth the difference in fuel costs.

Honestly, I don't think the Smart cars are that great... They're $12,000 with no options, A/C and an AM/FM radio add hundreds of dollars to the price and they only get 33/41MPG. The fuel economy is better than a lot of cars but I don't think it's enough to make it worth having a tiny little car with zero space inside.

They're cute and seem like a great idea, but when you have absolutely no trunk space and can only seat one other person, the novelty of it is going to wear out fast.

If you want to buy a tiny little car to save on gas at least get a Yaris, even though they're not great you'll at least have a back seat and a trunk for the same price or less if you go used.

#1....you think the Sonata is a gas guzzler....wow. Some of us have 10cyl BMWs.

#2....30 mile commute....you must take the Highway....have you ever seen what a bug on a windshield looks like? I wouldn't want to be caught dead in a smart car on a highway with a 20ton semi truck barreling down behind me. Safety is not one word that comes to mind. if you were gonna drive around in the city under 40mph....then I would say go for it.

and by the way....I am pretty sure you are negative equity on your Sonata (you owe more money than for what you can sell it for) the loss that you will end up eating will be more than any gas increase. think about it

Well I see this come up fairly often, and it is really not terribly difficult to break it down to come to a logical conclusion if you think about it a bit.

First let's start off with your Sonata. A private sale on a top of the line 2008 with a V-6 will, according to Kelley Blue Book, net you an average of about $16,300. Apply that against your loan and you will still owe $3,200 on the car which you will have to either pay off in cash at the time of the sale to get the lein release so that you can sell it, or you will have to fold into the loan on the Smart Car in what is called "negative equity."

Now, at $4.00/gal. $3,200 buys 800 gallons of fuel. Splitting the difference on your reported mileage on your Sonata, we'll just call it 20 mpg for simplicity's sake. So in an average year at 20 mpg and driving 16,000 miles you will spend precisely $3,200 for gas.

Now, the SmartCar does not operate on just air. It too has a fuel cost, though much less. EPA estimates the Smart Car to deliver 33 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway. Let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say it will average 40 mpg, as that makes the math easier. We can also overlook, for the moment, that Smart Car recommends using premium gas in their car, which costs more than $4.00 per gallon. At $4.00 per gallon, a car that gets 40 mpg will consume 400 gallons of fuel in the 16,000 miles you drive each year, at a cost of $1,600.

Accordingly, if you take that from the $3,200 per year you are spending now, you will in effect save $1,600 a year in fuel costs with the Smart Car. But you must amortize the loss you will take on selling the Sonata of $3,200, which basically means it will take you two years to make up the difference.

This doesn't even take into account that the Smart Car may not quite get 40 mpg on average, or that its gas costs more like $4.30 per gallon. Nor does it factor in that you have already paid the sales taxes on the purchase of the Sonata, but will have to pay new sales taxes, probably somewhere around five percent, or $600, on the Smart Car when you buy it. The latter alone is another 4 months of driving before you begin to realize any savings from switching cars.

All told, I would guess that with those factors figured in, and the higher rate of depreciation you almost uniformly see in the first year you buy a car, it will take you about 3 years to begin to realize any savings from switching cars.

So what it comes down to is how long you were planning to keep the Sonata if you did not otherwise decide you needed the Smart Car, and how long you would keep the latter if you bought it. If the answer to either question is less than three years, then probably you should not buy the Smart Car, as you will never recoup the cost for the changeover.

On a side note, this is the third significant price spike I've seen in fuel in my driving career. There was another in 1973 and another in 1979 when fuel costs rose precipitously. Both times, largely in response to media hysterics--the media needing something to report on after all to get us to watch--people began rushing out to unload their "guzzlers" at fire-sale prices and buying fuel-sippers, sometimes at premium prices. Then, as now, one simply needed to use a little common sense, do the math, and determine whether that is a rationale decision.

I will tell you, when I saw the gas prices rise this time, I began watching the papers for a good buy on a used high-performance car, as people have begun to dump those cars on the market, cars that I probably could never have afforded previously, but dumping them nonetheless without regard to whether that decision bore any serious scrutiny in terms of cost/benefit analysis.

Last month I picked up a 370 hp supercharged Jaguar XKR convertible for $27,500 with 24,000 miles on it. That car was about $90,000 new. Sure, it only get 20 mpg, but every time I fill it up I smile, as I know that the previous owner's decision to part with it was partly influenced by this latest mania over fuel efficiency.

At the end of the day, you may not want to tie your decision-making on this to fuel cost alone. You may want to look at overall value. I am guessing that if you do, you will determine that your Sonata, being a far more substantial and comfortable car will, for the time being, prove the better value.

relies upon on the place and how you force. could be good for city utilizing. Love the thought it is so small that that's sponsored right into a parallel paking area without protruding too some distance. Has a large risk-free practices and crash tests score by way of shown fact that it sounds like a tuna can. regardless of if that is poor on quicker highways. it is so small and mild-weight-weight that as quickly as passing enormous transport trucks you're actually blown around the line. undesirable "turbulance" that makes it complicated to regulate on highways and in extreme winds. some driving force say the MPG they get is a few distance below marketed. One proprietor i comprehend claims he merely gets 36MPG while it replaced into meant to get greater like fifty 5 MPG. He additionally says he has had transmisson issues (jerky shifts), that the dealership can no longer look to staggering.

Smart cars are cool but for my money a Scion XB is the way to go a Scion XB starts at $17,000. Depending on the package of Smart car you get they can range from $12,000 to $17,000. The $12,000 Smart car has no A/C or cargo space. It is basically an engine and wheels. A Scion XB is almost 3 to 4x the size and gets 31 hwy mpg the Smart car gets 45 hwy mpg but the Smart car requires a minimum of 91 octane.

YES

if you can afford on without getting in too much financial trouble i believe you should get a smart car.

although its not the prettiest car in the world it has great gas mileage and gets the job done.

some people think that a car thats 1/2 the length of a prius and 40 percent lighter then a mini cooper , however it has a great crash test rating ...

so i say why not

use this website for more info:

If you think it's good, do it! People on here are just going to give fake opinions from websites. You really can't trust what you read on the internet. Do a little research when you have time.

Yeah its worth it. A motorcycle would be even better except on rainy days.

try the toyota corolla