smart For Sale

If you’ve been shopping around for one of the cheapest types of cars - ‘smart’ microcars stylized with a lowercase ‘s’ - you’ll be surprised that it might not be quite that easy to find used smart cars near you. After having launched with big fanfare in the US in 2008, nearly 25,000 smart cars were sold that year and there was even a waiting list. However, too few Americans were enamored with the idea of such a tiny car that can only seat two people and sales soon crashed, only breaching 10,000 units per year three times in the following 10 years. 

Smart was finally withdrawn from the US market in 2019. During all those years, fewer than 100,000 Smart models were sold in the USA cumulatively - less than a quarter of the number of Toyota RAV4s sold in a single year in the US. Never having been a top-selling car, a used old smart car won’t be too easy to find, and while cheap second-hand smart cars do show up in the classifieds, you might have a problem finding one if you want to buy a smart car near you, especially if you live in the countryside. There simply aren’t that many of these used cars to buy out there.

How to Buy Smart: Start Online

The best place to start is to shop online and here, CarBuzz’s smart reviews are an excellent first step. It’s the easiest way to read up on all the available models and get to know their pros, cons, features, safety ratings, and how they compare with rivals. The next step when you want to buy smart cars online would be to make use of our used-car search function. You can set many filters, searching by price, year, mileage, color, and more. You can also set the search radius to within a certain distance of your current location, but since these are quite rare, you might have to increase the radius somewhat to find one, unless you live in a big city. 

Keep This In Mind When Browsing Used Smart Models for Sale

There aren’t many old smart car models to begin with, and only the two-seater body type was produced, but at least you have a choice between hardtop and cabriolet as well as gas and electric models. For city dwellers, the best smart car for sale in the USA is probably going to be a relatively new 2018 or 2019 EV model, because the gas models weren’t actually as economical as expected. A second-hand smart’s price will depend on many factors, but you will find that there are several to choose from for just a few thousand dollars. Smart cars have a four-year/50,000-mile warranty, so most late models will still have warranty cover left. Enquire whether it is still valid and ensure that the vehicle has been serviced at a smart or Mercedes dealership. Also, remember that a fully charged EV Smart has a range of only 58 miles maximum, so don’t even consider it as a city EV if your daily round trip approaches 50 miles - or if you cannot charge it at work. An older gas smart car from 2017 or earlier can get around 270 miles in the city on its 8.7-gallon tank.

FAQs about used smart cars for sale