A poop brown Smart ForTwo, seen in Beijing in 2015. The good Smart was fitted with all-black mirror housings, the typical old-school antenna, and ultra cool Hello Kitty seat covers.
There was a time, from about 2007 until 2010, that the oh so cute pink Japanese cat was extremely popular in China. Creative Chinese manufacturers copied Hello Kitty on everything imaginable, from shoes to cups to chopsticks to motorbikes to all kind of clothing to ash trays to lighters; it all existed.
And then there were seat covers for cars. The cover is basically a flattened version of the cat, complete with a hairband and arms and legs. On the passenger seat, poor Kitty is lying face up. “おならしないでください!“, she thinks (Japanese: Please don’t fart!). Or perhaps, as she is a Chinese-made copy of Hello Kitty, she will think: “请不要放屁!” If only we could ask.
Rubber ducks were another crazy in China, lasting a bit shorter, from 2013 until 2015 or so. The craze was born after Dutch ‘conceptual artist’ Florentijn Hofman created a gigantic inflatable rubber duck for the 9th China International Garden Expo in Beijing.
The duck was very popular with the populace and creative Chinese manufacturers copied it for everything. So in that time yellow rubber ducks suddenly appeared all over China, including in and on vehicles. This Smart thus is a double trend follower: Hello Kitty and rubber ducks.
Smart started selling the ForTwo in China in 2009 as an import. It was surprisingly popular in the big cities considering its high price point of 158.000 yuan. I never understood why Mercedes-Benz didn’t produce the Smart in China then, they could have made a lot of money. Next year, the first China-build Smart will finally launch, made in a joint venture with Geely, but that’ll be an SUV and not a city car.