When I first got mine and it was stock, around town it was a little bit noisier than the Audi, Mercedes, and Mini and about the same as the Honda CRV. At highway speeds it was noisier than all of them, but not annoyingly so. Since all it's mods, now its way noisier than all of them all the time!
Hope that helps some....
like MV stated, its all relative... but I used some Dynamat on the engine lid, this gets the car to a level of quiet that I feel is better than any car out there under 20k... and the amount of dynamat used was about 30-35 bucks worth.
That was the first thing I noticed about my smart, how noisy it was. But I drive a rag top, so I expected that. My trade in ride, a PT Cruiser, was amazingly quiet, you barely heard the cars passing you.
I would imagine the hard top smarts are much quieter than the cabrio's, so if noise level is an issue, take that into consideration.
Side story about car noise - in the 60's, Rolls ran an add, showing the passenger enjoying a hi-fidelity concert (classical, of course), with the tag line (something like) "At 50mph, all you here is the music". Land Rover then pirated the ad, and showed some guy driving down the road, and you couldn't hear anything above the car noise - their tagline? "At 50mph, all you can hear is the engine" (They got sued for that by Rolls).
In a Smart, with the windows down, at highway speeds, you get a lot of wind noise - part of that is the interior size of the car - there is nowhere for the wind to go except in one ear and out the other. Makes it kind of noisy. And yet, with the rear speakers installed (different thread - check the audio mods thread), I can get the radio loud enough to hear clearly (a pretty good feat, since I have some sound discrimination problems due to jet noise in the Navy). With the windows up, however, no problem. No worse than any other car I have had, and better than the old VW's.
I have a coupe. Road noise is relatively subdued... given the price point, it is better than its competitors. The engine is generally audible during acceleration, but it is pleasant to listen to (kind of a chunky growl around down that snarls like a much more expensive car when the tach starts getting in the upper ranges). At highway speeds, if it is not being worked over - it is inaudible. I have the rear cargo cover, and I keep it pulled most of the time - I think that helps a bit. Road and wind noise is less than that of my Saturn VUE.
Overall, and realizing it is a $16,000 car - it is quiet... I actually prefer it for long road trips... in fact I am leaving on a ~700 mile round trip in mine here in 2 days and looking very forward to it.
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