Although she never meant to make a point, Jennifer Holt shows Claremore motorists that “less is more” every time she drives to work.

From behind the wheel of her car, Holt can’t help but turn heads — most of them, turning and looking down for a better look at her diminutive Smart Car.

“For something so small, it really gets a lot of attention,” laughed Holt, curator at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore. “We’ve had people who’ve driven by the Memorial, seen my car and pulled around to come in and ask‘Who drives that teeny car outside?’ It’s pretty funny.”

Holt’s intention with her Mercedes-Benz-made Smart Car was never to show Claremore that big things came in small packages.

Rather, her decision to purchase her dwarven drive was one made out of economics.

“A few years ago, I was living in Norman and working at the Sam Noble Museum,” she said. “At the time, I was driving a Ford Escort. Even though it got decent gas mileage, gas prices were on the rise — and this was before they are what they are now — crazy.

“I knew I would be needing to get a new car eventually, so I started looking into models with high fuel efficiency,” she said. “I was just tired of having to pay out so much at the pumps every time I would fill up.”

While reckoning between different potential new vehicles, Holt said a friend told her about the Smart Car, saying they would soon be available in the United States and were worth a test drive.

So what made Holt decide to “get Smart?”

“In the beginning, it was all about fuel efficiency,” she said. “As far as gas mileage goes, I think Smart Cars get about 40 miles per gallon in town, and even better gas mileage on the highway, so that was a huge ‘checkmark’ in its favor. My friend had ordered a Smart Car for herself and there was a waiting list of at least a year back then to get one — it’s probably longer now — so before committing to buying one, I went to the Tulsa dealer to test drive one. They order theirs online but do have some models in the showroom for people to try out.”

Knowing the Smart Car to be small and seeing it in person, Holt quickly found, were two different matters, however.

“My first impression of it was ... well, it’s small — I mean, it’s really, really small,” she said. “When you see it for the first time, it looks like it should have a wind up key in back. It looks like a big toy.”

Once she got behind the wheel of the “big toy,” however, she quickly forgot about its size.

“It will sound weird, but it feels much bigger on the inside than it looks like on the outside,” she said. “They have surprising legroom and the seats are set up high so when you’re sitting in it, you don’t feel so much like you’re in a tiny car. It just feels like any normal compact car. It’s very comfortable, and the interiors, which I later found out were designed by Swatch, the watch people, are quite attractive.”