smart Owners Parade to 2010 Chicago Auto Show

The streets of Chicago will be taken over by a parade of smart fortwo vehicles this weekend, as smart owners will parade to the Chicago Auto Show on February 20. The parade, which will kick off a weekend with plenty of consumer test drives, will start at the Caribou Coffee on W. Maxwell and Halsted St. at 9:30 a.m. and travel down 18th St. to State St. to Cermak Rd. to Martin Luther King ending at McCormick Place West.

Consumers attending the Chicago Auto Show can test drive the smart fortwo at McCormick Place West between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

Consumers can also test drive the smart fortwo in the coming week at venues in the Chicago suburbs. smart USA will offer test drives at the following locations:

• Northbrook Court, Northbrook, Ill. – Feb. 23-25
• Westfield Old Orchard Mall, Skokie, Ill. – Feb. 26-28
• Woodfield Mall, Schaumburg, Ill. – March 1-2

To convince visitors to test drive the small car, the North Ameridan division of smart released a series of arguments in favor to the smart fortwo:

• Small – the smallest vehicle currently on sale in the United States, measuring just under nine feet
• long and just over five feet tall and wide
• Fuel efficient – achieving the highest miles per gallon, outside of the hybrid segment, at 41
• m.p.g. highway
• Safe – having met or exceeded all government crash tests
• Green – certified as an SmartWay vehicle by the Environmental Protection Agency for low
• emissions and air pollutant scores and the vehicle is 95% recyclable
• Urban – a great city car and performs well on the highway with a top speed of 90 m.p.h.
• Engineered by Mercedes Benz