We got our brand new smart in the middle October, after a long wait for production. In December when driving it, I experienced a terrifying situation that nearly had me rear-ended. I was accelerating to merge from an on-ramp to the freeway, with another car right behind me, when suddenly the car stopped moving, because it went from accelerating to a total idle. I managed to pull to the ride while coasting and avoided being struck. We immediately called the dealer, who towed it in. After a couple days of testing, they could not find a problem and concluded that it was simply that I was not familiar with the computerized traction control and steering stabilization, and that it had done what it should have in a slippery condition.
I was pretty certain that the driving conditions had not contributed, but gave them the benefit of the doubt.
A couple weeks ago it occured again. Once again, I was almost rear-ended by a vehicle coming behind me, only much closer this time, as he had to take the ditch to avoid striking me. Completely dry roads, and at every place I tried to accelerate, whether it was from a stop light, or changing lanes, or merging from a side street - No matter when I tried to accelerate, it would drop to an idle. If I pressed harder it didn't help. If I took my foot of and reapplied, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Using all varieties of pressure and release, I was able to get home (about 100km). I again called my dealer, who had it towed in.
Now, they are again telling us that they can't reproduce the problem, so we have to take the car home.
Other odd things it did was that it was creating phantom codes when the car was not running. They would plug in the code reader, find nothing. Shut off the engine and come back to it later, and find codes. They have no explanation for this either. At one point they told us that one of the cylinders misfired, so they reset the code and it was now fine.
We had to fight really hard to get them to provide us with a rental, considering that they had no idea what the problem was or how to fix it.
Now, they tell us that their policy is this: We agree that there is a problem, but we can't find the problem, therefore you have to take the car back and return the rental.
So, I now have a vehicle that I cannot drive, a $20,000 yard decoration.
Has anyone else experienced this type of problem? I have searched through the site for hours, and while there are some similar type situations, none quite match this. I found only one other mention on another website.
If anyone can offer some help, I would be ever so grateful. We were so enjoying driving it, but this has been too scary. I am a paramedic, so I drive for a living, in all kinds of weather and traffic conditions, and while this was horrible for me, I am more concerned for my wife who does not have my driving experience. If this happens to her, what are her chances?
Thanks for any help that can be offered!
Linear Mode
