[banzairx7]

Drove the bike 70 miles to the nearest Smart dealership today to go for a test drive. There were a total of three motorcycles including mine in the lot. This is at Inskip btw which is huge. Anyway I go in the showroom and it turns that all the bikes were owned by people who were at the Smart dealership for test drives. Kinda weird I thought.

[DucDave]

Originally Posted by banzairx7

Drove the bike 70 miles to the nearest Smart dealership today to go for a test drive. There were a total of three motorcycles including mine in the lot. This is at Inskip btw which is huge. Anyway I go in the showroom and it turns that all the bikes were owned by people who were at the Smart dealership for test drives. Kinda weird I thought.

Thanks for the insightful review of the Smart Car Test Drive....

[banzairx7]

Didn't know that anyone would be interested. Ill give it a go though. I took out a cabrio. Would have preferred the coupe, as I'm not a big fan of convertibles, but it was out of gas. The top was pretty cool. You can put it up or down at any speed. For being such a tiny car you don't feel as if your driving a small car. Tons of leg and headroom. They've done a good job at giving you the illusion that there is a big ole hood out front even though theres nothing there. When I backed it up though you snap back to reality. I turned around to see where I was going and the rear window is like a foot away. Ride is stiff, you feel all the bumps and cracks in the road. To me that's a plus Ill like that kind of ride. It handled better than I expected all though I didn't push it very hard.

I do have to gripe about the tranny. It's not the lack of a clutch thats the issue here. There are two problems for me. First is the time to shift is SLOW. There were a few places reprogramming ECU's on the previous model to halve shift times. God does this model need it. Second problem is in manual mode it still automatically downshifts. It won't let you lug a gear or stall it. I like driving a manual for the control it gives me. By not letting me be an idiot and go in to high a gear I feel like I've lost some of that control. It also will drop a gear or two if you floor it in the higher gears. Again Im hoping an aftermarket tuner comes to the rescue here.

Acceleration around town, where I drove it, was surprisingly good. It had no problem leaving the other cars from a light. My guess is the low 0-60 times is from the slow shifting, more gears to get there more lag, and it must just run out of the steam at 50+. That's just a guess.

As a small aside this is the first car that I actually liked the leather seats better than the cloth option.

[mzdagrl]

Y'know, my experience with the smart car has been seeing it parked in Europe. However, the concept is great.

Thanks for the review in your second post, I have always been curious about them. I actually parked next to a Chevy Aveo the other day and realized that my 36 mpg Mazda MX3 was not too different in size. Makes me curious as to what they have done differently to make the Smart car (4 dooor is roughly the same size as the Aveo) so fuel-efficient.

[SVRACER01]

Originally Posted by mzdagrl

Y'know, my experience with the smart car has been seeing it parked in Europe. However, the concept is great.

Thanks for the review in your second post, I have always been curious about them. I actually parked next to a Chevy Aveo the other day and realized that my 36 mpg Mazda MX3 was not too different in size. Makes me curious as to what they have done differently to make the Smart car (4 dooor is roughly the same size as the Aveo) so fuel-efficient.

they dont make 4 door Smart car.
its effiecient because there is a 3 cyl 1000cc motor making a whopping 71 HP under the hood. i can see why people put Hayabusa motors in them... shit...a SV motor might even be an upgrade

[Currently]

Finally ... a good use for a wrecked Hyabusa motor!

It is only a matter of time before the power chip companies come out with solutions to these gripes.

If Mercedes is building those, that means they are using CANBus or CANOpen and logging into CANBus or CANOpen is trivial once the parameters are discovered and defined.

There are some plusses to automation ...

[Kurlon]

Originally Posted by SVRACER01

they dont make 4 door Smart car.

They do, it's just not imported into the US. There were 3 major models of Smart cars, the ForTwo, whch we get, the ForFour, a 4 door version, and the Smart Roaster which was a sweet lil convertable well... roadster. : )

[SVRACER01]

OH! i just happened to be on their website this morning and didnt see one

[banzairx7]

They've discontinued everything but the fortwo now every where in the world.