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Getting Small & Loving It: The smart car fortwo on Two Coasts
From Wilmington, Vermont to Topanga Canyon, California, test-driving the tiny two-seater.
By
Steve Garbarino
May 23, 2008
The real danger of driving Mercedes-Benz’s twee new half-car, the e e cummings-named
smart fortwo, isn’t that a strong wind on the highway can make you hold that wheel very tight. It’s the buffoons who honk and yell at you as if you’re Woody Allen in
Sleeper. Or John Malkovich on the New Jersey Turnpike. “Hey Malkovich! Think fast!” Clunk. Going 65 miles per hour, heading from New York City to a friend’s house in Vermont, one douche actually started yelling at me to open my window. Like an idiot I did. And it was about the fourth time I had done it earlier in the day in the city. I do not learn.
“Hey guy! Guy!” this strap-on brayed at my already terrified wife and me in some Upper Yankee blue-collah accent that says “ayuh” instead of “okay.” “How much they want for one of ‘dose things?” (Answer: from $11,590 to $16,590, the latter for the convertible model). I had a navy-and-silver number that fell somewhere in between. Vinyl, not leather, seats, respectable in every way.
I went through this same traveling freak show nearly a decade ago when I test-drove the new incarnation of the VW Beetle. And, of course, the Mini-Cooper, now as ubiquitous as the word “hipster.” But truth is, you can understand why people gawk, yell, beep at the thing. It’s like seeing “Little” Mike Anderson from
Twin Peaks hitchhiking on some back road.
In Europe, mostly, and in 36 other countries, the smart fortwo is now part of the status quo of the Incredible Shrinking Automobile trend. Goodbye Ford. So long Chevy. And why not? It gets 40 to 45 miles per gallon on the highway. Nothing to sneeze over (whatever that means). I drove an automatic with “paddles,” but I’m not a turtle, so I left the gear-shifting to the transmission. Even driving automatic, you can feel the tug of the shift, which I liked for some reason I cannot explain. It’s like you’re more part of the machinery.
I warmed to it immediately, like I do a well-behaved pug, but my wife was having none of it. She looked at it, and actually considered passing on a lovely road trip when I suggested we take the five-and-a-half-hour scenic drive to Vermont. “It’s missing its back. It just ... ends ... like it’s been chopped off by the Jaws of Life,” she said, furrowing her brow. (The car is 8.8-feet long, the size of an average pro-basketball player.)
Once you get inside of it, though, you begin to forget it’s so small. We were able to pack two modest bags behind our seats. The ceiling height is just fine. The CD-and-stereo system was kind of awesome despite being modest. The visibility cannot be beat, since it seems like it’s made of windows, including the sunroof.
But then there is the issue of holding the road. This is a city car. To be able to park in the same spot that a motorcycle has just pulled out of in the West Village gives you a real sense of, well, pride! If it becomes a hit in New York, it is going to change a lot of lives for those people who sit reading their newspaper in normal-sized vehicles, waiting for a spot to open up or the street zambonis to scrubbing-bubble through.
The highway, however, is a different story. We felt winds as if we were in Dorothy’s Kansas home swept up in a tornado. Granted, I shouldn’t have been pushing the pedal to 80 miles an hour (the smart fortwo goes maximum 90; don’t do it). And sometimes it snows in April. Arriving on the unplowed streets of Wilmington, Vermont, we slipped about like we were children on their first ice skates. We could not get traction on hills—despite what the information packet on it tells us about weight distribution over the wheels, etcetera, anti-lock brakes, and all-weather tires. It weighs about 1,800 pounds.
That did not mean, though, that it wasn’t a lot of fun. As the snow fell, we could see from all directions. Windshield wipers and the defroster worked ably. It was like being in the proverbial snowglobe, a moving snowglobe. Momentarily, I hallucinated.
We made it home safely, and my wife said she’d consider buying one for the city, as that is the only place we live.
Over yonder on the West Coast, we drove the same entry-level model. Pulling up at valets, which is what you do in LA all the time, there was the obligatory question-and-answer routine, often in broken English. Driving it down Sunset toward the
Beverly Hills Hotel, on a Sunday, for mimosas, I felt rather diminished, as every other passing car was a Range Rover or Lamborghini or another such Viagra alternative. But it was a blast taking the sweeping curves toward the Pacific Coast Highway. If you’re not on a seriously long trip, more like a day trip, the smart fortwo is near-perfect. You can only go so fast on the PCH (ask Gary Busey, Robert Downey, Mel Gibson) before getting pulled over by the jack-booted LA Gestapo.
The visibility factor also played in nicely while cruising up killer-on-the-road Topanga Canyon Drive. Mulholland, on the other hand, was a bit spooky, what with those scenic drops and missing safety guards. One carpenter bee in the car, and you’re suddenly “down there,” an amputee making porn videos in the San Fernando Valley.
I would not likely take a child in a smart, despite that it has a great deal of reinforced steel and air bags in all the right places. It has, however, tested well in driver magazines and safety tests comparing it to other diminutive roadsters. If you’re not fond of your toddler, then go to town. Live a little.
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