It took me a while to realize that the author meant Smart (as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_%28automobile%29). Using the marketing typography made it seem generic, which I find amusing in some ironic way.
Thanks for clarification. I missed that completely at first. Even if the marketing dept. wants the logo in small caps, human-readable text has proper names capitalized. That's the way it should be.
The bar over the 'o' is a pronunciation hint. It means you should pronounce it with a "long o" sound. Therefore TransLōc is pronounced more like "Trans loak" and less like "Trans lock"
I was always taught to capitalize names regardless of their branding. In other words, even though the logo is lowercase like Adidas, you don't spell it 'adidas' unless you're writing copy for the company and that's what it says to do in the branding guidelines. Similarly, you don't add an exclamation point to Yahoo when writing about the company.