I test drove the Smart fortwo, and wanted to share my experience:
NOISY. What good is the 6-CD/MP3 player with iPod hook-up, when I can't hear anything over the engine noise? Test Driving the fortwo at 40 MPH was torture. At under 20MPH, non-accelerating, the noise was basically bearable, but every road is 25 MPH ~ 75 MPH, and the faster you go, the louder the noise.
The Egg shape of the Smart fortwo acts as an Echo chamber, amplifying the engine noise directly into the driver / passenger chairs. Awful in every way, the noise could be reduced by using much more padding / sound insulation between then rear engine compartment and the passenger space.
Switching from a combustion engine to a hybrid compressed air / electric engine would help a great deal to eliminate all that noise, and put an end to the use of fossil fuels once and for all. Now, that is a Smart idea!
Fit & Finish - EXCELLENT, very impressive body build. Clean and tight, better than most small cars.
Interior: GREAT. Nice seats, slightly better than expected for a small car. Roomy - this little car has much more leg room and head space than many SUVs I have driven.
Even the tailgate & storage space is comfortably laid out, just big enough for the little things you need for shopping, weekend or week long getaways. Drop the tailgate for two external seats! Very Nice.
One Design Flaw: Electric ONLY latch on the rear door.
Having had many hatch back type cars, they have a physical lever / latch that can be opened without electrical power.
The Smart car Requires electrical power to open the back door.
This seems like a very dangerous and completely unacceptable design flaw. On a side impact a door may get wedged shut - crawling out the back may be the only option. But with the electrical system damaged, or even just a simple dead battery - there is absolutely no way to open the back hatch. Bad idea.
It left me with the impression of the engineers assuming you would have electrical power, and not thinking through the possibility of opening the car if the electric was off, if the mechanism fails, or escaping from an damaged automobile.
Driving / Handling - tight, fast, responsive. The shifting feels a little different than an automatic, feeling a little rough when 'flooring it!' - but for $12K ~ $17K it felt ok. It would be nice if they worked on smoothing out the shifting a little more.
Overall, a great looking, good driving car. Comfortable seats with too much noise and rough shifting.
The convertible model may be the best fortwo of all, eliminating some of the noise by having the open top design and the 'wind in your hair' feeling.
A good start, I look forward to the next year's model with greatly reduced noise and a smoother shifting action, and more choices in engines: gas using combustion or No fossil fuel hybrids.
Today
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