How many goofballs does it take to tip over a Smart car?
Andrew Smith sure wants to know. Early Monday morning, just past 1, he heard a loud racket outside his apartment in San Francisco's Bernal Heights, and thought nothing of it. But when a neighbor knocked on his door and told him, you-gotta-see-this: His wife's 2009 Smart Car -- all 1,808 pounds of it -- was sitting on its roof.
"It was pretty hard to believe," Smith said Monday, a victim of an expensive prank that's being compared to an urban-style of cow tipping.
San Francisco was abuzz over the trail of teeny-tiny two-seaters that turned up turned on their sides -- and a fourth propped up on its rear end -- in two sections of the city.
Maybe the Google shuttle buses were just too ginormous. But Smart Cars? Since when did they become the target of disdain and testosterone-fueled craziness?
On Monday, with Twitter blowing up over #smartcartipping and TV news doing side-by-side "Car vs. Cow" comparisons, Smart Car dealers and devotees were in no mood to chuckle.
"I am a retired licensed, clinical social worker," said Kathy May, who eight months ago traded her Honda Accord for the sunny yellow 2009 Smart Car she zips around in on Alameda Island. "But if you turn over my sweet, little car, we will not be talking out your problems. I will go directly for vengeance."
Inside the hushed Smart Car room at the Beshoff Motor Car Dealership in San Jose, a sign near one of the mighty mites brags about its 36 mpg, ability to slide into the slimmest parking spot and how its "race car roll cage ...evenly distributes forces to form a protective barrier."
The manufacturer apparently didn't envision needing protection from human-shoving.
San Francisco police said the tippings were also happening in the Excelsior neighborhood starting about 1 a.m. One witness told KGO TV he saw about eight hoodie-clad men, who appeared to be up to no good, pile out of a van and, in mere moments, grabbed and groaned the cars off their wee wheels, and flipped it on its side.
The pranks against the German cars, first manufactured in the late '90s, will be investigated as acts of felony vandalism. It seems the fad began years ago in Amsterdam where Dutch delinquents routinely deposited the vehicles into canals. The infamous fad also has taken root in Canada.
It's also taking the Smiths' Smart Car to the body shop. The couple spent Monday waiting on insurance adjusters to tell them if their car can be cosmetically repaired, or if it is a total loss.
"That will be pretty upsetting," said Andrew Smith, but later he admitted: "Actually, I thought it was kind of funny. It is just an object. I have lived in San Francisco for 20 years and I am not immune to the insanity that takes place in this city."
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