Photo gallery: Smart ForTwo cabrio (2008)Design
Short, tall and with space for just two — hence, the name, geddit?? — the Smart ForTwo is Mercedes-Benz's idea of the ultimate city car. At just 2.5m from front to rear, the ForTwo is the smallest car on sale in Australia today. For comparison's sake, a three-door Toyota Yaris is 3.75m long and a Holden Commodore some 4.9m long.
Externally the design has changed little from the first generation. Park old and new side-by-side and you'll notice that the ForTwo has grown in most dimensions, mainly to make it sellable in the US With the previous dual-headlamp configuration making way for something resembling a melted jellybean, the ForTwo now looks permanently happy. At the back there are now two lights on either side at the rear instead of three. The exterior body panels, as before, are a mixture of plastic and steel — steel for the safety cell, plastic everywhere else — and, as such, the car can be ordered in a variety of single or two-tone paint schemes.
Inside the ForTwo cabrio
Changes to the car's interior are far more obvious. It's more formal than before, although most passengers still remarked on both its cuteness and quality feel. Australian cars come standard with a lockable glove box — which, remarkably, is optional in Europe — and a wealth of nooks and crannies for storage, including bins in the doors and storage nets behind the two seats. Our favourite, though, are the cavities on either side of the steering wheel — a perfect place to put your phone, wallet or parking ticket whilst driving. Luggage space, accessed via a lift down tailgate, is sufficient for the weekly shopping or a not-too-taxing weekend away. Although the ForTwo easily passed our cricket bag test, buckets that we tried hauling around wouldn't fit upright, impeded as they were by a non-removable sliding luggage cover.
Thanks to the ForTwo's tall boy stance and high seating position for both driver and passenger — assuming neither of them are Yao Ming or Bao Xi Shun — are well accommodated. There's plenty of seat travel, but the pedals are slightly offset to the left and the steering wheel is non-adjustable. While we had no problem finding a comfortable driving position we would caution that, if you're keen on the Smart, make doubly sure during the test drive that you can find yourself a comfortable driving posse.
Features
To get a ForTwo al fresco you'll have to fork out an additional three grand over the base model. For that amount you get a powered soft-top with a heated-glass rear windscreen, which can be raised or lowered whilst driving or at standstill. When you close the car off from the elements, more external noise will creep into the cabin compared to the "coupe" version of the ForTwo, but it's not excessively noisy nor unbearable. When the roof is fully collapsed it will wipe out nearly all your view rearward as the roof sits in a crumpled heap above the tailgate. Because of this — not to mention the recent cold snap — we preferred having the roof fully open but with the rear windscreen still up.
Standard equipment on all Smarts include power windows, climate control air-conditioning, automatic door locking, hill-start assist and a sound system with a single slot CD player. The climate control air-con was a nice surprise in a car so small; however, its insistence on cancelling air recirculation on every start was irksome in extremes. CDs sounded reasonable through the standard audio system — well, as reasonable as a two-speaker car stereo can sound. Radio playback, on the other hand, wasn't up to snuff: FM stations sounded, to our ears, more hollow than usual and AM reception was poor, with higher than normal levels of interference in the city. Balancing this out were some neat touches, like speed sensitive wipers that slow down to intermittent speed when the car has stopped, leather-wrapped steering wheel with stitching, and the ability to adjust the angle of the headlights.
Click for "automatic" mode
Performance
Only one transmission is offered with the Smart: an automated five-speed manual. It's like a normal manual transmission except that there's no clutch pedal, all the clutching and declutching action is done by the Smart itself. Gears are changed by either tipping the gear lever forwards or back or, preferably, by pulling one of the wheel-mounted shift paddles. Smooth up changes require a small and well-timed lift off the throttle.
Our car was fitted with the AU$750 "softtouch" option that allows the Smart's electronic brain to choose gears for you, kind of like a normal automatic transmission. Softtouch is activated via a button on the shifter, and deactivated the moment you use a paddle or move the shifter. It all sounds good in theory but driving around in automatic mode is jerkier than a storeroom filled with beef jerky. Because the Smart's transmission isn't a traditional automatic — there's no torque converter for one — you lurch violently forward and back on every up-shift, especially when accelerating away from a traffic light derby. This can be mitigated somewhat by paying close attention to the engine note and lifting off slightly whenever the transmission decides to change gears. If you're going to such lengths, though, you might as well change gears yourself. At times we wished that Smart offered a traditional manual transmission, while at others — mostly when we were stuck in peak-hour traffic — we were thankful for not being given the choice.
None of the ForTwos that we've sampled have been fitted with the optional (AU$490) power steering. This naturally entails a nice workout for your arms whenever you're parking the car or plodding along slowly. Although there's little communication through the wheel unless you happen to hit one of Sydney's many potholes.
Despite its rear-engine, rear-wheel drive layout, the Smart isn't a fun car to drive in the traditional sense of the word. Despite the lack of Bathurst 1000 trophies in its cabinet, there's a great deal of fun to be had zipping in and out of gaps in the traffic. And finding parking can be a real hoot too; on more than one occasion we slotted into a prime parking spot nary a gnat's whisker longer than the Smart. Except for a night of strong winds, which caused the car to squirm around in its lane, the ForTwo never felt out of its depth on city freeways. The 15-inch alloy wheels, rock-hard suspension, standard ESP (electronic stability program) and anti-lock brakes should prevent the short and tall Smart from tipping over in all but the most extreme situations.
A 52kW 1.0-litre three-cylinder engine doesn't sound particularly promising but keep in mind that the Smart weighs just 790kg. Conquering steeper hills often entails changing down a gear, while keeping up with fast flowing traffic requires giving the engine a good thrashing — a task it always seems to be up for. This partly explains why we could only average 7.3L/100km, during primarily lead-footed city driving, which is a far cry from the quoted combined cycle rating of 4.9L/100km.
Conclusion
There's so much to like about the Smart, from its permanently happy visage to its unique engineering — it's a breath of fresh air in a world of me-too-ness. Despite the fact that the ForTwo is the cheapest open-top car in Australia and that we do most of our driving alone, the Smart will only ever be a fringe player in our country. Put that down to the fiscal conservative inside us all who has already noted that we can get more seating and space for the same price or less. Until Daimler conjures up a stretched version with more seating, the Smart will only be a hit in crowded metropolises like London, Rome and New York.
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