Crazy or Smart?

Sometime before the end of the year, we’re going to end up buying a minivan, most likely a recent vintage Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna. We’ll take a look at what kinds of deals we might be able to get for a new one as end-of-year closeouts, but we’re not above buying used either. I already had our Intrepid in for an appraisal and CarMax offered about $1700 for it, so I figure we should be able to get $2000-2200 somewhere else, possibly.
The thing that I’m looking at now is the Smart car, which is finally being released in the US early next year. You can put a $99 reservation fee down now for one of their little beauties, which run from $11k to $16k. They should also get somewhere around 40mpg, comparable to our Civic hybrid. Coincidentally, our hybrid could fetch about $12k to $14k as a used car sale. When we visited Rome for our anniversary years ago, these little Smart cars were everywhere, and we just loved them. The only caveats are that it’s not exactly a practical minivan backup (only two front seats, no back seat), I’m not sure how well it would do in the snow/ice (though they claim it handles well), and I’m not sure I’d be able to fit my curling brooms for those drives up to the club (though the front passenger does fold down for more room). I suppose we could always just keep the Intrepid around for emergencies. Hmm… What do you think?