ECO-Celebs put money where mouth is

Wow, ZAP cars has received orders for $2.2B in smart cars!?!? That's billion, with a B. This is wonderful, horrah for hollywood!

Celebrity cachet helps drive demand for eco-friendly cars

By CAROLYNE ZINKO
At the 2003 Academy Awards, Cameron Diaz and Tim Robbins made an unlikely fashion statement: They each arrived in a chauffeur-driven Toyota Prius.

Since then, celebrities and wannabe celebrities have been getting behind the wheels of eco-friendly cars, to show that they're committed to alternative energy _ and that it's easy to be green. It's working. Toyota has sold 224,975 Priuses since 2003 without paying one penny in direct marketing to promote its hybrid brand.

Now, in the latest Hollywood extravaganza "The Da Vinci Code," Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou can be seen zipping down Parisian sidewalks in the tiny Smart car.

Good gas mileage (60 mpg) and easy parking have made the vehicle ubiquitous in Europe.

But will the two-seat micro car, made by DaimlerChrysler, come west the way the Japanese-made Prius came east? In other words, on green hipster wings?

ZAP, a Santa Rosa, Calif., firm that markets alternative-fuel cars and whose name stands for Zero Auto Pollution, hopes so. It imported 11 Smart cars for sale in 2005 and another 250 this year, distributing them in states where the vehicle complies with emissions standards _ even though DaimlerChrysler hasn't made a formal decision to sell to its dealerships in the United States.

Defying the conventional wisdom that Americans will drive only big cars, ZAP thinks there is a market for cars that are not only fuel-efficient but head-turners _ and has invested $10 million in proprietary technology to modify the Smart car's internal computer codes. This allows the company to adjust the fuel mixtures so the car will meet American emission standards.

"Like 'The Da Vinci Code,' we cracked the code, literally," joked Steven Schneider, chief executive officer of ZAP.

Schneider said that last year the company received orders from U.S. dealers for more Smart cars than they ever expected to deliver, totaling more than $2.2 billion. And that was even before "The Da Vinci Code" gave the car an extra, unintentional bounce. "We have 53,000 e-mails (from prospective buyers) that we've not been able to get back to," Schmidt said. "A big portion of those (people) have been influenced by 'The Da Vinci Code.' It adds to the cool factor."

For "The Da Vinci Code," there was no official product-placement negotiation between the automaker and Columbia Pictures, said Joe Richardson, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz USA, a division of DaimlerChrysler.

Still, the Smart car seems destined to be propelled by the twin forces of celebrity hipness and environmentalism.

This summer East Coast public relations maven Cygalle Dias is using Smart cars from ZAP to ferry New York's youngest socialites to and from her organic day spa events in the Hamptons. And actor Larry David, who has set up a family environmental foundation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, drives a Prius in his HBO series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Meanwhile, George Clooney was pictured in the April "green" issue of Vanity Fair beside his Tango, a narrow, two-seat electric car, and is backing a campaign to reduce dependence on oil called Oil Change, in conjunction with the Sierra Club and the NRDC.

"The attention that celebrities have lavished on Prius has really helped awareness _ this is the kind of advertising that money could never buy," said Cindy Knight, communications administrator for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. "In our case, it was accidental. Celebrities found this car on their own and started talking about it, which was completely surprising to us."

Part of the hesitancy to sell minicars in the United States is based on historic buying trends and the influence of pop culture. "We as a society have preferred larger cars for a long, long time," said Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal, a magazine that focuses on the intersection of autos, energy and the environment. "The only time that changed was during the two oil crises we had in the '70s and '80s."

Cogan said automakers are reluctant to go full bore in bringing large numbers of very small cars to the market without perceiving a big demand. Reports in the Economist, BusinessWeek and elsewhere have said DaimlerChrysler is losing money on the Smart car in Europe, and there is speculation that the automaker wants to let an importer test the market before committing to widespread sales in the United States.

But the success of the Mini Cooper, and the recent introduction of two small gas-powered cars, the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Fit, shows that "there's a competitive nature" to the small-car market and that the Smart car could be a player, Cogan said.

Michael Marsden, a popular culture expert at St. Norbert College in DePere, Wis., thinks it is entirely possible, thanks to the Smart's cameo film role, that "a lot of people will see it, connect to the car, start asking questions and start putting pressure on dealerships. It will be identified with the intelligent choice."

The three-cylinder Smart Twofor is 8 feet 2 inches long and 4 feet 11 inches wide and was designed by the maker of Swatch watches and DaimlerChrysler. Its stateside gas mileage is 40 mpg, a result of the emissions tinkering, and retail prices start in the middle-$20,000s, according to Alex Campbell, a salesman at ZAP.

In Phoenix, Greg Peterson said he bought a Smart car from a local dealer in March for its fuel efficiency and its looks. The 44-year-old former software company owner is studying environmental planning and lives in a "sustainability showcase house" that features edible landscaping and rainwater harvesting equipment.

"(The Smart car) is so distinctively different that 30 to 50 people stop me and ask about the car on a weekly basis," said Peterson. "What I'm into is sustainability, and making a statement in the world."