Daimler encourages you to design your own Smart, results vary

Not digging the Smart Fortwo's two-color paint palette? Think you can do better? Well, then, you're in luck. Daimler, Smart's German parent company, has just announced a contest where customers and budding designers can customize their own Fortwo. Visit styleyoursmart.com in order to, well, style your Smart.

You have until February 23rd to post your own smarty-pants design, and the winners will be announced three days later. America's tiniest automaker promises prizes totaling about $7,200 U.S. (€5,000), which, we imagine, is plenty of money to turn your design into a reality... assuming of course that you already own the base Fortwo.

At this point, the contest has just begun and there aren't many contestants just yet, so we grabbed the most colorful option for our lead image above. We briefly considered plastering a Fortwo with the AutoblogGreen logo, but then thought better of it. Perhaps if they finally fix that transmission... Press release after the break.

[Source: Smart]

PRESS RELEASE

Open innovation - smart launches a design contest: Style your smart

Stuttgart - smart is staying true to its brand slogan "open your mind" and opening to outside ideas with a design contest. From 6 January 2010 fans of smart and design worldwide are invited to design a smart fortwo on the website www.styleyoursmart.com. smart is looking for the coolest smart design and will award prizes with a total value of €5000 to the winners.

Marc Langenbrinck, Managing Director smart brand and Head of Sales & Marketing smart says "In our daily contact with our customers we keep experiencing how passionate they are about smart. Many of them personalise their smart with products from our wide range of accessories. Lots of them go even further and realise their own ideas. We are now taking this up. The design contest offers all smart drivers and fans a platform to lend expression to their creativity."

Participants can give free rein to their imagination. A design configurator is available on the online platform www.styleyoursmart.com. It offers a multitude of colours, prints, patterns and shapes. At the same time budding artists can also develop their own graphic ideas. In addition, they can exchange views with other contestants and comment on and rate ideas and designs. In this way a design community for car enthusiasts and smart fans will be created.

Designs can be put online until 23 February 2010. An independent expert jury will subsequently select the best contributions based on the community ratings. The winners will be announced on the website on 26 February 2010 and can look forward to prizes totalling €5,000.

"Style your smart" is one of more than 1200 ideas submitted by the "Business Innovation Community", a Web 2.0 platform on the Daimler intranet. Employees can post their ideas here – and their colleagues from other departments and regions can comment on them, rate them and further develop them.