Are You Ready to Buy a Smart Car?

Stage 4 in Smart Car Buying Decision Guide

Are you ready to buy a smart car? This is the next to last step in our smart car buying decision guide. Smart cars are not for everyone... how about you?

Well Potential Smart Car Buyers,

We have completed the smart car information gathering stages and looked at lots of smart car reviews in our smart cars discovery journey. We are now ready to move into Stage 4, where you'll get a handle on what's important to you in a car, in preparation for Stage 5... Decision Time.

This is where we have to sort out the "good, bad and the ugly" features about the smart fortwo and decide if it's the right car for you to "make a statement."

This stage is going to require some paper, pencil and honest feedback to help you assess the smart fortwo and feel confident about your decision to buy it.

Please don't rush through this stage and give serious thought as you assess what you liked and disliked about the fortwo, how you rank the importance of the smart car's features and finally give honest input into the decision process which gives you the confidence for making the best decision for you... whether it is to buy a smart car... or not.

I will guide you during this exciting stage as you ponder... Can this strange kind of car really be right for me?

Your "Smart Car Guy",

Make Your Own Smart Car Pros and Cons List

All right, it's time to take all of our information gained from stages 1 and 2 and lay out the good and bad points about the smart fortwo that YOU feel are important. I hope you took good notes during stage 2 when you read through all the reviews about the smart car!

Take a piece of paper and make 2 columns on it, one label "pros" (the good), the other "cons" (the bad) and let's consider "the ugly" to be how you will pay for your smart car, should you buy one (another whole subject).

List the things in each column that you either like or dislike about the smart car from what you've read and seen (and hopefully road tested). Put whatever you want in each column. It doesn't matter if you agree with my list on the previous page and/or what any of the other reviewers said were pros or cons. This is YOUR list.

All done? OK, great! On to the next step...

Rank the Smart Cars' Features in Order of YOUR Importance

This is where your "gut" instincts about what really matters to you come into play. We simply need to rearrange our good and bad lists from random order and rank them by importance, with first ranking being the highest and the last ranking being the lowest in importance.

The best way to do this step of the smart car evaluation is to conduct a one-on-one battle between two features and rank which one is more important to you.

Here is a quick example, take the following 3 good smart fortwo features:

• good gas mileage
• cute looks
• safety features

Now compare safety features to cute looks... which is more important to you? (For me, it's safety features.) Then, re-rank the list of smart cars features based on your ideas of importance.

1. good gas mileage
2. safety features
3. cute looks

Next, compare safety features to good gas mileage... which is personally more important to you? (For me, it's safety features.) So, re-rank again.

1. safety features
2. good gas mileage
3. cute looks

Now you have the 3 features ranked in order of relative importance to your beliefs and feelings.

OK, I think you've gotten the idea by now of how to do this smart car evaluation, right? So, rank both your good and bad points about the smart fortwo in order of personal importance to help with your "buy a smart car" decision.

To give you an example of how to rank the features, etc., I've also taken the list and conducted my own personal ranking, just to give you a point of reference to compare to your personal ranking.

My Features Ranking List

1. Allows a person to "Make a Statement"!
2. Great safety features
   (tridion safety cell,4 air bags and good braking system)
3. Achieves good mileage at 34/41 MPG
4. It's designed to be a commuter car
5. Mercedes Benz engineered
6. Small footprint on the environment
7. Roomy interior for two
8. Generous cargo space in rear
9. Handles well in the city
10. Many creature comforts are standard
11. Many options available on 3 models
12. The fortwo is "cute"
13. Can park in really tight spots

Work up a list something like mine and you're going to start to "get the picture" about whether a smart fortwo car is really right for you or not. This completes Stage 4. You should now be ready to decide whether to buy a smart car or not.