The two-seat smart is back, and it has to beat cars that seat five

smart unveiled the #2 at the Paris Motor Show this morning, thirty years after it showed the first two-seater in the same city. It is the car the brand was built on, brought back after a three-year gap: the EQ fortwo left the UK in 2023, when the #1 arrived and smart, by then a Mercedes-Benz and Geely joint venture, turned to SUVs.

The new one is recognisably the old idea. It is 2,746 mm long, which is 51 mm longer than the EQ fortwo, with the wheels pushed out to the corners and the Split Tailgate carried over. The turning circle is 6.95 metres kerb to kerb, against the fortwo's 7.0. Of the cars on sale today, the tightest is the Dacia Spring at 9.63 metres, more than two and a half metres wider.

Underneath, almost nothing is carried over. The #2 sits on a new platform smart calls the Electric Compact Architecture, with a 60 kW motor at the back driving the rear wheels and a five-link rear suspension that smart says is a first in the class. The battery is 35.8 kWh of LFP, about twice the fortwo's 17.6, and smart's target is 180 miles on the WLTP combined cycle. The EQ fortwo was rated at 83.

Charging is where the gap is widest. The fortwo managed 22 kW at best. The #2 takes 65 kW on a DC charger, which smart says takes it from 10 to 80% in 20 minutes. That turns it from a car that could only ever live in a city into one that can leave it.

All of those figures are targets. smart's release says the car is still going through type approval, and that the specification may change before the first deliveries. Treat 180 miles as what smart is aiming for rather than what it has measured.

Now the price. smart says the #2 will be available "from less than £20,000" and will publish full UK prices later this year, with pre-orders from spring 2027. That is a good number for a smart, and the last fortwo was £17,350. It is not a good number for a small electric car, because several with more seats already cost less. The Leapmotor T03 is £12,995 with five seats and 165 miles. The Spring is £11,990. A Fiat 500e is £17,245, a Citroën ë-C3 Plus and a Hyundai IONIQ 3 are £18,495, and a BYD Dolphin Surf is £18,650.

There are cheaper two-seaters too, but they are not the same thing. The Fiat Topolino and Citroën Ami are quadricycles that go 46 and 43 miles and are not allowed on a motorway. The #2 is a small two-seater that is.

So it has to win on the things a two-seater does that a five-seater cannot, and those are the length and the turning circle. If your problem is a parking space, a narrow street or a tight turn into a mews, nothing on sale does what this does. If your problem is the price of a small electric car, a four- or five-seater is cheaper.

One thing that could move the price is not in the release. It does not say where the #2 is built. The rest of smart's range, the #1, #3 and #5, is built in China, and none of it qualifies for the Electric Car Grant. If the #2 is built there as well, "less than £20,000" is the price you pay. If it is not, it could come down. Until smart says, assume it is the price.

The UK gets three trims: Pure, Premium and a Couture Edition limited to 999 cars across Europe. The Pure comes with a single-phase 7.4 kW on-board charger, which is what a British home supplies, so it takes 5 hours to go from 10 to 80% on a home wallbox. The Premium and Couture Edition have 11 kW, which only helps on a three-phase supply, and few British homes have one. Every trim gets smart Pilot Assist, adaptive cruise control with stop and go, blind spot detection, rear cross traffic alert, a 10.1-inch centre screen and an 8.8-inch driver display.

Vehicle-to-load is on every car too, with one catch for this country. It needs an adapter sold separately, and the adapter gives a continental type F socket. smart's own footnote warns it may not suit local plugs.

The Premium adds a glass roof, heated faux leather seats, a seven-speaker Sennheiser system and two-tone paint. The Couture Edition is Atelier White Matte with a Platinum Gold roof and 16-inch Lyra wheels with gold details, and has a numbered badge inside.

What the release leaves out is the part that decides it: the width, the height, the boot, the weight and the prices of the three trims. We will put those up as soon as smart publishes them.