smart has painted a wall in Melbourne with the car it will show in Paris in October, and the mural is the closest thing to a picture of the new two-seater that anyone outside the company has been given.
The smart #2 is the two-seat city car the brand has been talking about since the Concept #2 appeared in Beijing. Rather than put out a studio photograph, the smart has commissioned murals in six cities and handed the reveal to the artists. Melbourne has one of the first of them, a wall by the local artist Georgia Laurie that sets a red car in front of Flinders Street Station. A green W-class tram runs along behind it and a tangle of hibiscus and monstera fills in everything around the edges. Shanghai, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires have theirs already, Berlin and Paris are still to come, and the cute little car gets its world premiere at the Paris Motor Show in October.
What the Melbourne Mural Shows
The Melbourne mural is the closest look anyone has had at the smart #2. It is small and upright, red with a black roof, wheels pushed out to the corners, and adorable round headlights either side of a blunt nose. It is finished off with a slotted panel across the front with a #2 badge where a number plate would sit. The Berlin artwork shows the back of it, with round tail lights and a wide black bumper. It is paint rather than a photograph, so the fine detail will shift between now and October, but the shape is plainly the fortwo idea done again.
It looks a good deal bigger than the car we all loved. The fortwo was 2.7 metres long and the smart #2 has to carry a battery, a 2026 crash structure and the next generation of the Tridion safety cell that smart is very proud off. Battery capacity, range, charging speed, performance and price have all been held back until the covers come off in Paris.
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ABOVE: The #2
The Last smart Two-Seater Did Not Go Well Here
Mercedes-Benz sold the smart brand in Australia between 2003 and 2015 and shifted roughly 4,500 cars in those twelve years. Sales peaked at 799 in 2005 and were down to 108 by 2014. The retail model was pushed online in 2013 when the showrooms stopped paying for themselves, and the brand was withdrawn the following year.
The reason was never that Australians disliked the car, because plenty of people found it charming and said so loudly. It was that a fortwo asked around $18,990 drive-away, which was close to Corolla money for half the length and only two of the seats. The parking argument that made the car a hit in European cities has never carried the same gravitas in a country where the shopping centre car park is the size of Mars.
What smart Sells in Australia Today
The brand came back here at the end of 2024 under LSH Auto, the Mercedes-Benz retail group, with the #1 and #3 small electric SUVs. They go through Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane rather than through a national network. The #5, a mid-sized SUV pitched at Tesla Model Y buyers, has slipped more than once and is now expected between October and December this year from somewhere in the low $60,000s. We have driven the #3 in Brabus form and gone over the #5 in detail.
Nobody at smart or at LSH Auto has said the smart #2 is coming to Australia, and the murals stop well short of saying otherwise. A wall in Melbourne is a great deal cheaper than putting a car through local homologation, so the presence of one does not commit anybody to anything.
Why smart Painted It Instead of Photographing It
smart has leaned on art since the day it was invented, to the point that its own shorthand for itself was s+m+art, standing for Swatch, Mercedes and art. The mural campaign is being sold as a continuation of that. Kang Yi, the global chief marketing officer, calls the smart #2 the evolution of a revolution and says it was designed to put playfulness, premium polish and easy agility back into the modern urban jungle, which is the sort of sentence that comes with a marketing budget attached.
Shanghai’s wall came from the contemporary artist Zhu Bin, Hong Kong’s from the four-person collective Parents Parents, Buenos Aires from Martin Ron, Berlin’s goes up at the East Side Gallery with the Mercedes-Benz design team holding the cans, and Paris gets the French street artist Brusk not long before the real reveal.
smart #2 What Is Known So Far
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Body | Two-seat city car, all-electric |
| Design | Mercedes-Benz Global Design Team |
| Structure | Next-generation tridion safety cell |
| World premiere | Paris Motor Show, October 2026 |
| Battery and range | Not announced |
| Power and performance | Not announced |
| Charging | Not announced |
| European price | Not announced |
| Australian availability | Not confirmed |
| Mural cities | Melbourne, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Paris |
| Sold in Australia now | smart #1 and #3, with the #5 due late 2026 |
| Australian distributor | LSH Auto, through Mercedes-Benz dealers |
More smart Stories
- smart Concept #2 Makes City Cars Fun Again at Beijing
- smart #5: Mercedes-Benz Styling for smart Off-Road Adventure EV
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Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
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