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31 well engineered. There is no evident thrifting. To that end, Heiko Schmidt, department manager, Product Management, notes that on the previous generation smart, the wheels were held on with three lug nuts. For the new model they have gone to four. A small, but telling thing. In fact, Winkler points out that had they made the car four-inches longer, they would have been able to save money because there would be the possibility of using parts that are used for other Mercedes cars. "With this size," she says, "we have to create parts for the vehicle." But what's interesting is that while they had to create specifc parts for the vehicle, the vehicle itself was developed along with Renault. Renault has a city car, the Twingo. Back in 2008, Renault was contemplating a new version of that car, which was originally launched in 1992. They were thinking about a rear-engine architecture, something that the smart has had. Daimler and Renault have been collaborating together for several years, at least in the context of the Renault- Nissan Alliance and Daimler. It has been more visibly Nissan-centric, as in the Nissan engine plant in Decherd, Tennessee, producing engines for both Infnti Q50 and the Mercedes C-Class since June 2014 and an assembly plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, being built for the two brands (Infniti production will start in 2017, followed by Mercedes Benz production in 2018). In 2010, the two organizations started working together . . . and in 2010, those Renault engineers started collaborating with people from Daimler on the development of what was to become the smart fortwo (and the four- passenger version, the forfour) and the Twingo. According to Winkler, this collaboration allowed them to spread the costs for engineering. It is worth noting that Renault is building the Twingo in its plant in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, along with the forfour; the fortwo is built at the smart plant in Hambach, France. For the new vehicles, some €450-million was invested in Novo Mesto; €200-million in Hambach. Investments in Hambach included equipment for gas-metal-arc welding and soldering in addition to conventional spot welding. There had been 160 robots used in the plant; they've upped the number to 500. The vehicle build is predicated largely on modules, so there are supplier companies on site including Magna (for the tridon safety cell, doors and tailgate), Faurecia (body panels), ThyssenKrupp (rear axle drive module and front axle), and SAS Automotive Systems (cockpit). The 89-hp, three-cylinder turbocharged engine that powers the fortwo was also a joint development between the two companies. As cited earlier, the fortwo is a small car by any measure. And the development engineers actually developed a new measure for dealing with the vehicle. It is called the "body space index" (BSI). This is a measure of how efciently space is used. It is a ration between the interior to exterior length. The interior length is measured from the accelerator pedal in its unapplied position horizontally back to the rear end. The fortwo achieves an index of 75%, which the company describes as being a "top rating for this criterion." BSI notwithstanding, the smart fortwo is clearly a car for the urban environment. t The smart fortwo is manufactured in Hambach, France, in a complex that's centered on a central assembly building that's shaped like a plus sign: the long external arms of each of the branches allows the feeding of modules and parts to the assembly line. There are a variety of supplier buildings surrounding the main building.