Toyota Yaris, coming in spring of 06

Wow! Impressive!

 

Uh.... what is this "I prefer an Echo over Yaris speech?"

Do you know that Echo is just NA Toyota rebadging of a Euro Yaris name? In Japan, this same car is called the Vitz.

And they come in 2-door HB, 4-door HB, coupes, 4-door sedans.

And Americans have another Vitz/Yaris already on the road that you don't know. It is the 4-door hatch called the Scion Xa.

 

Very light car, strong frame....

 

Keep in mind that running into a fixed barrier is roughly equivalent to running head on into a car of the same weight. (In fact, since the barrier itself gave way, it's like running into a car of even lesser weight.) If this were a head on crash with a normal sized car, the Smart would have likely fared worse.

Even so, it was going fairly quickly (70mph from what the narrator said). This translates to -70 mph/s. I believe a 46 mph head on collision with a car three times the weight of the Smart would produce the same deceleration. Which brings up the point that crash tests should be against an object that represents the average vehicle (or even 75th percentile) out there, not just a vehicle of similar weight of the subject.