First look: Smart heads off-road

SMART has revealed the first official image and the name of the compact soft-roader model it will launch in 2006.

Called the Formore, it will also signal the entry of the brand to the US market.

Smart's fourth model and first four-wheel drive will go on sale in Europe the same year. Australian sale is also scheduled to begin in '06.

The car will be built from the start of 2006 at the DaimlerChrysler plant in Juiz de Fora, Brazil, which has a capacity of 60,000 cars per annum.

In a full sales year, Smart plans to sell half of these in the US and half in its other core markets.

"With the Smart Formore we will be applying the typical Smart characteristics of innovation, functionality and joie de vivre to the SUV sector," said the president of Smart gmbh, Andreas Renschler.

“The new Smart model will be a distinctive vehicle, unique in the market - so unique that we translate SUV as Smart Utility Vehicle. It is the ideal model to launch the Smart brand in the US market." And the name? Smart says it is following the logic that it began with the four-seater Forfour on which Formore is based.

The basic principle of this logic is to give names that have a direct connection to the uses of the vehicle concerned.

Sounds a bit suss really. Working by that logic does that mean another name for the Forfour could be the Forless?