NORMAL - Bill McDaniel has attracted a lot of looks the last couple of days. Well actually, it's his car that has everybody talking. "If it's parked somewhere, everybody who walks by smiles," said McDaniel, manager of leasing at Country Insurance & Financial Services. | Video

McDaniel is smiling, too.

After a nearly yearlong wait, he has the Twin Cities' first "smart fortwo" car. He picked it up in St. Louis on Monday and spent most of the day Tuesday showing it off to friends and co-workers.

"I think it's great," said John Rediger, heating and air conditioning supervisor at Country Insurance. "I think it's absolutely fantastic. It's got plenty of room."

You wouldn't guess it from the outside. The car, which only measures 8.8 feet long, 5.1 feet tall and 5.1 feet wide, takes up only half a parking space.

"It only looks small from the outside," McDaniel said. "It's half of car. It has three cylinders instead of six and weighs 1,700 pounds instead of 3,400."

That leads to decent gas mileage - 41 miles per gallon on the highway and 33 miles per gallon in town. (It uses premium gasoline.)

"It has an 8-gallon tank, and I had 200 miles on it and still had half of tank of gas," McDaniel said.

It's also ecologically friendly.

The smart fortwo, produced in France by smart, a subsidiary of Daimler-Benz AG, is painted with water-soluble paints. The body panels can be recycled, and it has low-exhaust emissions.

The car also is affordable. McDaniel's Passion coupe, an upscale version of the car, cost less than $15,000. It has alloy wheels, air conditioning, power windows and a plug for an MP3 player.

McDaniel, who admits he's a car fanatic, has been eyeing the car for several years, hoping one day they would be available in the United States as well as their native Europe. In March, he learned Mercedes was taking reservations for cars to be delivered to the United States.

The down payment was only $99.

"We're the only ones who have gotten a car without sitting in it," said co-worker Deni Menken, who owns a Mini Cooper. "We're the car geeks in the division. We love cars."

McDaniel got to choose the color - metallic blue (only red, black, blue, yellow, white and silver are available) - and the options.

Then he had to wait. And wait.

"I was getting tired of waiting," he said.

Finally, in September, he got the chance to go to Chicago and test drive one of the cars. It wasn't until Friday that he got the word his car was finally ready to be picked up in St. Louis.

While the car can reach a top speed of 90 mph, McDaniel has only had it up to 75 mph on the trip home from St. Louis.

He said it handled well on the road despite the windy conditions.

The car uses every inch of available interior space for storage. There's storage in each door and inside the tailgate.

The company also maintains there is 12 cubic feet of storage space in the trunk of the car - if you load it up to the ceiling.

The engine is in the trunk under that storage space. The front of the car has the air conditioning condenser and the fluids, such as those for the brakes and window washers.

"It's really well-engineered and a solid car," McDaniel said.

And best of all, this one is all his.