In 1965, when I was 7 years old, my family bought a little red Volkswagen.

To save money, we drove from my hometown, Columbia, Tenn., to Mobile, Ala., to pick up the car as it rolled off a transport ship from Germany.

At the time, the Volkswagen Type 1 (later dubbed the Beetle), was gaining popularity in the United States as a fuel-sipping alternative to Detroit’s big land yachts. The price was small, too. At about $1,600 our VW “bug” cost just less than $1 a pound.

My father had done the back-of-the-napkin math that men do when they want to rationalize a car purchase. Heck, gas was already 30 cents a gallon, he must have reasoned; and who knew where it would go from there: 40 cents? 50?

I thought about our Volkswagen the other day as I was standing outside a car store waiting to test-drive the new “fortwo” — a two-seater vehicle so small even its name is spelled entirely with lowercase letters.

The maker of the fortwo, a company called smart car, is a division of Mercedes Car Group. So far, more than 800,000 smart vehicles have been sold in 36 countries throughout the world, according to the company’s Web site. The car has been for sale in the United States since January.

While I took a number and waited to drive the mini car, I talked to a retired woman who likes to play the slot machines in Tunica, Miss.; a former military guy who had seen the smart car in Europe, and a male schoolteacher who knew that smart sells a turbo version of the fortwo overseas. It was a mix of gawkers and car enthusiasts that bodes well for sales, I think.

The parallels with VW Beetle of the 1960s and 1970s are unmistakable. American consumers, spooked by high gas prices, are again lining up to test drive a German-engineered economy car. (Interestingly, the fortwo is assembled in France with a Mitsubishi-built, 3-cylinder motor. Welcome to the global economy.)

The demonstration was staged at Land Rover/Jaguar/Porsche of Chattanooga on Lee Highway. Against that backdrop of the sleek luxury cars, the two little smart cars brought down from Knoxville looked like party crashers.

The nearest of the nation’s 74 smart car dealerships is in Knoxville, according to Kristin Gracy, a smart brand specialist on hand to show the cars.

You can order a fortwo online at smartcar.com for $99 down. Delivery can take eight to 12 months, Ms. Gracy said, and the Knoxville dealership has a standby list of 75 customers waiting to snatch up any unclaimed cars.

Ms. Gracy said customers were lined up all day to drive the little cars, which, at a mere 8 feet in length, look like souped-up golf carts. Part of the charm of owning a fortwo is watching other motorists rubberneck.

“People at gas stations walk up and want to know if it gets 300 miles per gallon,” Ms. Gracy said. (Actually, the car averages about 38 mpg in combined city/highway driving.)

“The other day a guy driving a motorcycle turned around and looked at the car for several seconds,” Ms. Gracy said. “I thought it was going to hit a telephone pole.”

After a 20-minute wait, I climbed into a red cabriolet smart fortwo for a test drive.

Some impressions: The turning radius of the fortwo is so tight it feels you’re steering a roller-skate. Acceleration from the 70 horsepower engine is better than I expected, with 0-60 mph times in the 12-second range. The cockpit is comfortably large, although storage space is limited.

The car’s fit and finish are first rate, a reflection of its Mercedes pedigree. Its main bugaboo is a manual/automatic hybrid transmission that bucks noticeably in the auto-shift mode.

Prices range from $11,590 for the base coup to $16,590 for the top-trim cabrio.

There’s a video on YouTube.com that shows a fourtwo crashing head-on into a concrete wall at 70 mph, and its cockpit safety cell emerges uncrumpled. (Still, I wouldn’t try this at home.)

Verdict: For city dwellers looking for a thrifty urban runabout, the fortwo is a small car with big curb appeal. If gas prices stay north of $3, you might want to join the line and take a number.