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The Fortwo is a small-packaging miracle. But is the rest of the car equally smart?
Execs from Smart USA like to point out that the vast majority of cars on the road in the U.S. have only one person in them. Smart USA president David Schembri likens our commuting habits to going to a restaurant alone but ordering meals for the whole family. An extreme analogy, but the man has a point.
Given that logic, we should all commute on motorcycles, right? This would also serve to purge the gene pool of a great number of dimwits, nincompoops, and other morons who would no doubt try to dial phones, check e-mail, or read the morning paper on two wheels. Of course, motorcycles comprise only the smallest percentage of annual motor vehicle sales, and what of those stuck in seasonal climates like the one about to throw our Hogback Road office into a dark gray funk for six months?
The Smart solution is the Fortwo, a car with two seats and reasonable luggage space in a body about the same size and weight as your average Honda Gold Wing trike.
Like an Energy Bar: Lots of Nutrients in a Small Package
Pricing starts at $11,590 plus a destination fee that hasn’t been worked out yet. We presume it will be lower than the industry average because the guys down at the docks can pack more miniature Fortwos onto each truckload. No, that’s not true.
This little automotive energy bar manages 45 cubic feet of passenger space and 12 cubes of cargo space in a body just 106 inches—8 feet, 10 inches—long. Thanks to its upright stance, the Fortwo offers 40 inches of headroom—within an inch of a Cadillac Escalade—and just 0.1 inch less legroom than the ’Slade. We sent a 6’7” staffer to drive the Smart and he fit.
Consider this: at 6’7” and 260 pounds, our man is 75 percent as tall as the Fortwo is long and 14 percent of the Smart’s 1800-pound curb weight. In order to package equivalently-sized passengers, the last Ford F-150 we tested would have had to accommodate a pair of people measuring 13 feet, 9 inches tall and weighing over 800 pounds apiece. Say what you will about the American public’s obesity problem, but we are a long ways from that sort of height.
Clever Engineering and Intelligent Design
It’s not just space that the interior boasts, but excellent execution as well. It’s a simple, yet attractive, mix of black and gray plastics and fabric trim matching the seats in red, tan, or black. In front of the driver and behind the steering wheel sits a single large gauge, an analog speedometer with digital fuel and water-temp gauges below. An optional package sprouts a tach and an analog clock mid-dash on a pair of alien eye stalks.
Especially considering the Smart’s low price, the interior surprises with its quality feel and thoughtful detailing. Glossy plastic color-matched to the interior fabrics trims the instrumentation and tops the turn-signal and windshield-wiper stalks, and instead of generic knobs for the climate controls, a pair of vertical sliders—one for temp and one for fan speed—flank the fan control knob, all of which are molded in a classy satin-silver plastic and set in the middle of the dash.
It May Look Like an Egg, But Just Try to Crack It
Though opinions on the Fortwo’s styling vary greatly, we like it. The overall shape of the car eliminates many possible descriptors, but we will absolutely call it cute. The upright stance, tall windows, contrasting colors of the body panels and the safety cage (more on that in a second), double-almond headlights, and upturned edges on the grille lend the Smart a friendly, disarming appearance. This is not the sort of car that gets the finger from any other motorist.
That band of contrasting color wrapping over and around the Fortwo is not just a stylistic element; it is actually the car’s most important safety feature. Called the Tridion Safety Cell by Smart, it is essentially a roll cage. If you’ve ever watched a race driver walk away from a horrific, tumbling wreck and wondered how a person could survive that, it is primarily because the roll cage keeps the car from collapsing in on the driver.
A cage of beefy steel that completely surrounds the cabin, the Tridion Cell performs the same function as a race car’s roll cage, minimizing dangerous collapse of the cabin and intrusion into the passenger compartment by foreign objects—be they trees, SUV bumpers, or charging elephants—and ensuring that the bodies of the passengers can decelerate without cracking heads and rib cages on structural metal. In addition to the cell, the doors in the Fortwo are filled with considerable bracing.
NHTSA has yet to stuff a Smart into a wall, but Europe’s crash-happy NCAP administration—which scores cars only in collisions with similarly-sized vehicles—awarded the Fortwo four out of five stars for occupant protection. We’re skeptical about how the rigid body shell and tiny crumple zones transmit the force of a larger crash to the occupants of the tiny Fortwo, but Smart has data from an offset frontal crash test with a Mercedes-Benz S-class (both cars traveling at 31 mph, for a combined speed of 62 mph) that shows the Smart does indeed crash and protect its occupants like a much bigger car.
I Thought I Ordered This Well Done
Despite the thorough engineering of space and safety, not all aspects of the Smart are equally well-prepared. The three-cylinder gasoline engine (the only engine we get in the U.S.) sips fuel at the miserly rate expected of a 1.0-liter mill, but it idles like a cold ’81 Peugeot diesel, produces barely more power than a single Ferrari F430 Scuderia cylinder—70 hp—and requires premium fuel. Even so, with gas over $3.00 a gallon, an extra 20 cents per is offset by the 33/40 city/highway mpg estimate Smart is expecting from the EPA.
Smart predicts 0–60 in 12.8 seconds, but we know that judging the Fortwo on its performance is like criticizing a Dodge Viper for its poor fuel economy. We can forgive the weak engine because it will help the Smart achieve its fuel-sipping goal, but the transmission is another matter.
Between the rear-mounted three-cylinder and the driven rear wheels sits a five-speed manual transmission with automated shifting, the only available transmission. Similar to Ferrari’s F1, Lamborghini’s e-gear, or BMW’s SMG, this feels like an early test-version of those transmissions. Upshifts come way too early and gear changes are slow enough to let the Kenworth in the next lane over catch up between cogs. And clutch takeup from a stop is as smooth as that of a first-time self-shifter in driver’s ed.
Shifts can be affected manually using either the shifter or paddles mounted behind the steering wheel, but that only improves their timing. They still take aching seconds and the information display calls for upshifts way too early for the small-displacement three, sometimes dropping the tach as low as 1500 rpm. A Corvette Z06’s LS7 can comfortably lug at those speeds but, with a torque peak of 470 lb-ft, that V-8 betters the Fortwo’s 68 pound-feet of torque by 402.
Once under way, the Smart is uncharacteristically stiff, riding more like a sports car than a stingy fuel sipper. Perhaps that’s in the interest of momentum preservation, since obtaining it is no easy task. At highway speeds, rough roads get awfully unsettling and 80 mph can be downright scary, with the car darting around its lane in crosswinds and bouncing over pavement imperfections. Good thing it’s so narrow and can therefore weave a lot without leaving its lane.
Going isn’t the only problem the Fortwo has. It isn’t particularly happy stopping, either. The brake pedal is almost as stiff as an unboosted system, and offers no feel at all. Stops in the Smart tend to lurch like the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera we drove recently.
Did They Make You a Pie When You Moved In?
As much as we object to the way the car goes and stops, we still like the idea of the Smart—a minimalist yet voluminous transport capsule for two people and a large load of groceries that doesn’t take up a ton of space on the highway. But this is the second generation of a car that’s been on sale in Europe for nine years, and we expected it to accelerate and brake with far more polish.
Just look at the Toyota Yaris, a similarly priced car with slightly inferior fuel-economy numbers that has a back seat for those occasions when the whole family goes to dinner. The Yaris isn’t one of our favorites, either, but the execution is much better. Schembri points out that the Yaris isn’t the kind of car that your neighbors will come over to talk about, which is true. We guess it’s a question of how much you like your neighbors.
First Drive: 2008 Smart Fortwo - Previews - Car and Driver November 2007
M
Bluetec would be far too complicated a system to be fit into the very limited space the smart has.
Instead of the Smart, I was thinking about used VW Golfs or Jettas, but the last model ones are increasingly hard to find.
Need to make sure it's worth the trip.
