If you’ve seen an exceptionally small silver car riding around town — and by small we’re talking 8 feet, 8 inches in length — you’ve probably crossed the path of Sharon Cost.

The Newnan resident won the right to drive a “smart car” for 30 days in an Earth Day raffle offered by Buckhead Area Transportation Management Association (BATMA) in honor of Earth Day 2008.

Cost, who is about two weeks into her 30-day trial, works in Buckhead as an administrative assistant in a law firm, and she’s no stranger to environmental responsibility. Cost, also a recycler, typically drives a Toyota that gets around 33 miles to the gallon. Her daily commute brings her as far as the College Park MARTA station, where she takes a train the rest of the way in.

Cost is an Atlanta native but lived for a while in Arizona.

“I remember being very surprised, and a little disappointed, when I returned to the area and found that Georgia was a good bit behind Arizona in terms of eco-consciousness,” said Cost, who tries to be a responsible consumer.

“I remember being very surprised, and a little disappointed, when I returned to the area and found that Georgia was a good bit behind Arizona in terms of eco-consciousness,” said Cost, who tries to be a responsible consumer.

Cost happened to walk over to Lenox Mall on Earth Day for lunch and stumbled upon BATMA’s “Go Green & Commute Clean” Earth Day event. When BATMA called a few days later to say she had won, she screamed in the middle of her typically staid Buckhead legal office.

“If I had the money, I’d consider buying one,” said Cost. “It’s fun to drive. You get lots of stares out on the road and more than a few ‘thumbs up’ from fellow drivers. When I stopped at Kroger in Thomas Crossroads for groceries, there were five people circling the car when I came out,” she added. “They all wanted to know where I got it, and how good the gas mileage was.”

According to the www.smartusa.com Web site, the gas mileage rating was 40 miles per gallon in the city and 45 on the highway under the 2007 Environmental Protection Agency rating system. Under the new 2008 EPA rating system, the car is rated at 33/41. Cost said she’s been getting between 38 to 43 miles per gallon since she picked it up.

The two-seater smart cars are produced by Mercedes-Benz in Hambach, France, about an hour and a half from the company’s headquarters in Stuggart, Germany, utilizing carbon footprint-conscious, smart manufacturing technology. The facility uses rain water to cool the machinery and captures and recycles the steam generated by the manufacturing process.

Smart cars, also called “smart fortwo,” are 95 percent biodegradable and come with a surprising five-star safety rating, certified by both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) just this past month.

Cost picked up her smart car at smart center Buckhead, which occupies space in the Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead dealership. Smart center Buckhead is the only smart car dealer in Georgia. The demand is high. Europe is way ahead of us in terms of the number of smart cars on the road, but they’re really catching on here in the U.S.

“We’ve outsold the nation two months in a row,” said Emily Stubbs, brand manager at smart center Buckhead. You’ll have to plan ahead if you want to buy one. Smart center Buckhead doesn’t sell cars off a lot. You can reserve a smart car for a $99 reservation fee, and you’ll wait about a year to take delivery.

The vehicles start at $11,600 and top out around $16,600. The $99 registration fee is fully refundable at delivery. About nine months into the reservation process, buyers are asked to configure the car for delivery approximately 90 days later.

And get this, the “skins” are interchangeable. For about $1,200 more, owners can purchase different color skins and change the color of their smart car to match their moods.

This business of changing out the color of your car comes from SWATCH, of interchangeable watch band fame. In fact, the word “smart” derives from “S” for Swatch, “M” for Mercedes-Benz, and “art” for the interchangeable color configuration. This interchangeable format begs the question, why not let people digitally “design” custom skins, which would take the “art” component to a whole new level? I think I should get a free smart car just for suggesting it. What’s the area code in France?

Riding in a smart car is like channeling Fred and Wilma, minus the foot power. The vehicle is surprisingly zippy. The engine is mounted in the rear and is rear-wheel drive.

The one liter, three in-line cylinder engine is an “automated manual five speed.” The smart car is 106 inches in length by 61 inches in width. You can “buddy park” two smart cars in one standard parking space. Not only that, but you can tandem park them side by side, rear wheels to the curb, in one parallel parking space, something I’d personally like to see (wonder if you can split a parking ticket if you illegally park).

Smart center Buckhead is at 2799 Piedmont Road, N.E. in Atlanta. For more information, call 404-425-5560 or log onto www.smartcenterbuckhead.com. For even more product information, go to www.smartusa.com. And if you see that little, silver car running around Coweta County, give Sharon Cost a thumbs up.

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The real danger of driving Mercedes-Benz’s twee new half-car, the e e cummings-named smart fortwo, isn’t that a strong wind on the highway can make you hold that wheel very tight. It’s the buffoons who honk and yell at you as if you’re Woody Allen in Sleeper. Or John Malkovich on the New Jersey Turnpike. “Hey Malkovich! Think fast!” Clunk. Going 65 miles per hour, heading from New York City to a friend’s house in Vermont, one douche actually started yelling at me to open my window. Like an idiot I did. And it was about the fourth time I had done it earlier in the day in the city. I do not learn.

“Hey guy! Guy!” this strap-on brayed at my already terrified wife and me in some Upper Yankee blue-collah accent that says “ayuh” instead of “okay.” “How much they want for one of ‘dose things?” (Answer: from $11,590 to $16,590, the latter for the convertible model). I had a navy-and-silver number that fell somewhere in between. Vinyl, not leather, seats, respectable in every way.

I went through this same traveling freak show nearly a decade ago when I test-drove the new incarnation of the VW Beetle. And, of course, the Mini-Cooper, now as ubiquitous as the word “hipster.” But truth is, you can understand why people gawk, yell, beep at the thing. It’s like seeing “Little” Mike Anderson from Twin Peaks hitchhiking on some back road.

In Europe, mostly, and in 36 other countries, the smart fortwo is now part of the status quo of the Incredible Shrinking Automobile trend. Goodbye Ford. So long Chevy. And why not? It gets 40 to 45 miles per gallon on the highway. Nothing to sneeze over (whatever that means). I drove an automatic with “paddles,” but I’m not a turtle, so I left the gear-shifting to the transmission. Even driving automatic, you can feel the tug of the shift, which I liked for some reason I cannot explain. It’s like you’re more part of the machinery.

I warmed to it immediately, like I do a well-behaved pug, but my wife was having none of it. She looked at it, and actually considered passing on a lovely road trip when I suggested we take the five-and-a-half-hour scenic drive to Vermont. “It’s missing its back. It just … ends … like it’s been chopped off by the Jaws of Life,” she said, furrowing her brow. (The car is 8.8-feet long, the size of an average pro-basketball player.)

Once you get inside of it, though, you begin to forget it’s so small. We were able to pack two modest bags behind our seats. The ceiling height is just fine. The CD-and-stereo system was kind of awesome despite being modest. The visibility cannot be beat, since it seems like it’s made of windows, including the sunroof.

But then there is the issue of holding the road. This is a city car. To be able to park in the same spot that a motorcycle has just pulled out of in the West Village gives you a real sense of, well, pride! If it becomes a hit in New York, it is going to change a lot of lives for those people who sit reading their newspaper in normal-sized vehicles, waiting for a spot to open up or the street zambonis to scrubbing-bubble through.

The highway, however, is a different story. We felt winds as if we were in Dorothy’s Kansas home swept up in a tornado. Granted, I shouldn’t have been pushing the pedal to 80 miles an hour (the smart fortwo goes maximum 90; don’t do it). And sometimes it snows in April. Arriving on the unplowed streets of Wilmington, Vermont, we slipped about like we were children on their first ice skates. We could not get traction on hills—despite what the information packet on it tells us about weight distribution over the wheels, etcetera, anti-lock brakes, and all-weather tires. It weighs about 1,800 pounds.

That did not mean, though, that it wasn’t a lot of fun. As the snow fell, we could see from all directions. Windshield wipers and the defroster worked ably. It was like being in the proverbial snowglobe, a moving snowglobe. Momentarily, I hallucinated.

We made it home safely, and my wife said she’d consider buying one for the city, as that is the only place we live.

Over yonder on the West Coast, we drove the same entry-level model. Pulling up at valets, which is what you do in LA all the time, there was the obligatory question-and-answer routine, often in broken English. Driving it down Sunset toward the Beverly Hills Hotel, on a Sunday, for mimosas, I felt rather diminished, as every other passing car was a Range Rover or Lamborghini or another such Viagra alternative. But it was a blast taking the sweeping curves toward the Pacific Coast Highway. If you’re not on a seriously long trip, more like a day trip, the smart fortwo is near-perfect. You can only go so fast on the PCH (ask Gary Busey, Robert Downey, Mel Gibson) before getting pulled over by the jack-booted LA Gestapo.

The visibility factor also played in nicely while cruising up killer-on-the-road Topanga Canyon Drive. Mulholland, on the other hand, was a bit spooky, what with those scenic drops and missing safety guards. One carpenter bee in the car, and you’re suddenly “down there,” an amputee making porn videos in the San Fernando Valley.

I would not likely take a child in a smart, despite that it has a great deal of reinforced steel and air bags in all the right places. It has, however, tested well in driver magazines and safety tests comparing it to other diminutive roadsters. If you’re not fond of your toddler, then go to town. Live a little.

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With the multimillion dollar Automotive x prize competition in full swing we’re starting to be inundated with the myriad of designs and concepts from the 70-odd teams that have already signed up to build and race a commercially viable 100mpg vehicle. The latest concept is the TVA Gazelle tilting vehicle from Australian designer Phillip James.

The vehicle is essentially a quad-bike with an enclosed canopy and is designed to tilt when cornering. The design features a unique steering system that links the steering wheel to the vehicle’s tilt angle and not the wheels. This design is said to offer superior stability, especially in the case of an emergency such as when traction is loss due to the wheels having no part in controlling the direction of the vehicle.

James is currently in negotiations with Indian and Chinese manufacturers and predicts that a production version could cost less than $10,000. To reach its goal of delivering a fuel economy rating of 100mpg, the Gazelle will run a compact fuel-injected 350cc petrol engine and is being designed to accept a hybrid or electric powertrain as well. The first prototype is scheduled to start testing in December.

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There was a lot of attention given a recent federal test of the new Smart fortwo. The little coupe received what was, on the whole, the highest possible kudos following a series of crash tests.  The microcar also was rated “good,” last week, by the influential Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Indeed, five of the 17 cars on the IIHS “good” list are in the small car category. A dozen years ago, there were none, notes Joe White, of the Wall Street Journal.

I frequently field calls from nervous parents ready to buy the first set of wheels for their children. “How big a car (or truck) should I get?” the conversation usually begins. And in decades past, I would have suggested, “really big.” In 1996, the death rate in the very largest of vehicles, say a Lincoln Town Car or Crown Victoria, was 76 per one million registered vehicles. For the few minicars on the road, the numbers were 165 deaths per million.

In 2006, the most recent year for which IIHS data is available, the death rate fell to 41 in very large vehicles, but just 106 in minicars. Over the same period, the statistics dropped from 126 to 99 in small cars, such as the Ford Focus or Toyota Corolla.

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