Smart could bring back ForFour as rival to Renault Twingo
If such a car is green-lit, the new four-seater would likely take the #4 name and be twinned with incoming #2
Autocar render shows how the finished #4 may look
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by Will Rimell
3 mins read
24 September 2025
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Smart could consider a successor to the Forfour as it looks to justify the huge cost of creating the incoming #2’s new bespoke platform.
If such a project got was green-lit, it would cap a huge overhaul of the Mercedes- and Geely-owned brand’s line-up, which will include the launch of the recently announced #2 city car next year, along with major updates to the #1 crossover and #3 coupé-crossover. They will join the #5 SUV flagship, deliveries of which are set to begin in the coming months.
Smart’s European CEO Dirk Adelmann told Autocar at the Munich motor show that while there are no concrete launch plans “yet” for a new ForFour, he hinted it is something the brand could look at. The previous four-seat city car went out of production at the turn of the decade.
Like the #2 sibling, itself a successor to the popular Fortwo, a new ForFour will likely be designed and engineered for Europe, and use the same underpinnings.
Any design will follow that of the #2, which, while not yet revealed, “needed to look like a successor”, said Adelmann.
Adelmann told Autocar another vehicle using the platform, such as a #4, would be needed in order to justify the huge cost of creating the #2’s new bespoke architecture. “We need the economies of scale,” he said. “The tricky part was to get it small enough for the #2; it’s much easier to expand slightly.”
Adelmann confirmed the #2’s platform is likely to use a dual-motor set-up but wouldn’t confirm any other technical details, adding: “The wishlist features we gave to engineering was a very small turning cycle – the same as the last Fortwo – to make [the #2] really practical in city centres.”
In a first for Smart, the platform is being developed jointly by Geely in China and Mercedes in Europe, given that the car is built mainly with a focus on the European market. This differs from the #1, #3 and #5, which were all engineered by Geely but designed by Mercedes.
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“That’s very important, because this team makes sure that we have a European product that is ready for European customers,” said Adelmann.
Adelmann also gave more details about the upcoming #2, which earlier this month was confirmed for a launch next year.
Despite its name, that car will sit below the £29,960 #1 and slot in at the premium end of the small electric car market, which has taken off since the launch of the Renault 5 earlier this year.
Asked if the Smart’s naming strategy would now become confusing for buyers, given that the smallest car in the range, the #2, was numbered higher than the larger #1 crossover, Adelmann said: “Our nomenclature is a bit odd. The even numbers we reserved for non-SUVs. So the smallest non-SUV body type number is a #2. Yes, it’s higher than #1, but so be it.”
He said the idea for a Fortwo successor has been in the works since 2019: “It was mainly a cost topic. We were calculating business cases as early as 2019. We found a way.”
On the decision to bring it back, he added: “You can live without the icon, without the brand-defi ning vehicle. I don’t say it’s the nucleus of the brand, but it’s a big, big portion of the brand.”
Adelmann did, however, admit Smart was “late” in bringing the car to market. “We always were trying to make it feasible, but it took us three years longer than expected,” he said. “Better late than never.”
Asked what it means to Smart to bring back the Fortwo, he said: “We have 2.2 million Fortwo and Forfour customers in Europe who are really waiting for a reinterpretation of the twoseater. We have had a retail network that is crying out for a Fortwo successor over the past two years.”
Around the same time as the launch of the #2, Smart will begin rolling out major updates for the #1 and #3. Adelmann said the first, which will happen next year, will be a “big” model-year update focusing on “some” hardware changes. This will be followed by “an even bigger facelift” in 2027.
