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Hatchbacks Smart Car Smart Fortwo
491 messages, Last post on Oct 07, 2009 at 6:46 AM
You are in the Smart Car Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
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Replying to: lostchild (May 17, 2007 9:57 am)
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Replying to: templeton3 (May 21, 2007 11:40 am) Not sure about you but I wouldn't want to get in an accident riding in anything short of an Abrams M1.
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Replying to: snakeweasel (May 21, 2007 3:03 pm) I don't understand that thinking. Look at it this way: the fortwo is 100% safer for both the driver and passenger than any motorcycle, motor scooter, (or bicycle) in an accident with a motor vehicle, yet 100's of thousands of people ride and enjoy them safely everyday. In addition, I would suggest that due to the outstanding crash-test results for the fortwo, the survivability of a passenger or driver in the fortwo in a crash would be as high, or perhaps higher than in any car on the road today that you think would be safer, provided (in either case) that the seatbelts are used. Come over to the educated consumer side from the knee-jerk reaction crowd: visit Smart's website, watch the crash test results conducted by independent agencies on Youtube and elsewhere, and you will learn why the NHSTA gave Smart the thumbs up. 
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Replying to: edf4 (May 27, 2007 7:12 pm) Beautiful little car. Very spacious inside. I'm 5'8" and I had to push the seat 6 inches forward. It feels exactly like a Mini or Fit inside when you are driving - just when you look at the rearview mirror, there is NO REAR. It's odd - you don't feel that it's small from the driver's position. But it's tiny. Great sound system as well. Love the plastic body panels. It does need a seat height adjuster and a few things like a larger rear view mirror and the gearshift reworked. There's no way except for the all too easy to get washed out in the sun display in the dash to tell what it's doing. It's like a fancy joystick instead of a typical "D" arrangement with a +/- area off to the side. All in all, I rate it a solid 9 except for one glaring problem. One that makes me, a 5 year fan and supporter of the car give it a "no buy" recommendation. The transmission is the worst I've ever driven. Ever. Words can hardly explain how it is defective - but I'll try. In automatic mode, there is half a second hesitation between shifts, but it does well enough. It feels like a stepped CVT. It's not precise, but it works okay I guess. My guess is all of the computers are fighting each other and getting in the way. But it's somewhat tolerable. But put it into manual mode(only mode for the Pure/Base model!) and it is worse than a Bug, worse than a Yugo. Horrendous. Something is broken. And so severely that a typical U.S. buyer will literally walk away from the car. I revved it and it took two seconds to shift every time. It would almost over-rev the engine by the time it got around to shifting. The only way I could make it shift *now* was to completely lift off the gas and pound on it as hard as I could again. Utterly brain-dead computer/controller. The car was fast, though - great engine. So I would get a "vroom! lag lag lag slowing down lag.. SHIFT. wroom!!! lag lag my God it's a nice day outside ...lag... SHIFT. vroom! 40mph... lag lag lag *shift already now* - (hits the rev limiter) then shifts. Usually when I shift a car drops revs. This, at 2/3 throttle hit the limiter before it went from 2nd to 3rd. One one thousand... Two one thousand.. No, really - that bad. If anyone from Mercedes is reading this by some miracle, fix the transmission or sales will die. It feels like you took a Honda Fit or a very nice Mini Cooper S and gave it a lawnmower transmission. Fantastic car and a joke that belongs in a kid's electric car or some piece of junk in one of those scooters from China for a transmission. And, even for me, a die-hard fan, it was too much of a dichotomy. Fix it or no sale.
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Replying to: edf4 (May 27, 2007 7:12 pm)
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Replying to: networkguy (Jun 21, 2007 10:09 pm) The MR2 is the same width, give or take. Check. In the event of a crash from the rear, there is a roughly two to three foot crumple zone - basically the area beyond the rear axle. This is standard on most cars in fact. On the both vehicles, since they are RWD, this is reinforced by solid axles and such - so it really is basically impossible to intrude much past the rear axle. The trunk area on both cars is about the same - just one is a hatch and the other is a convertible. So the interior is about the same size - two people. Check. That leaves the front of the car. With the engine on the Smart being mounted right above the rear axle, in a crash, it's a lot like a 911 - the thing is very tough from the rear. In a typical car, the engine is something that is there - it helps keep the other vehicle from intruding, but it's not really absorbing energy, either. So subtract the engine from a typical car, like, say, the Honda Fit. What you have left is a 2-3 foot long series of dead space crumple zones. The MR2s front is essentially a big empty thing like on a VW bug. Totally optional from a safety standpoint, since it is a mid-engine RWD car, just like the Fit. That bears repeating, in fact, for those skimming this post. The fit is a mid-engine RWD car. It's toughest in a crash from the rear. The entire front of the car is a dedicated crumple zone in the Smart. Think of it as a fwo foot wide bumper. This is what Mercedes spent a lot of their time on. Now, true, if it was me, I'd have lengthened the front by another two feet and put in a small trunk - just for asthetics, mind you - sort of what they did with the roadster. So you end up with a car that is made to be a crumple zone built around a shell. It's actually very safe. But... there's a tradeoff. In the event of a crash, the entire car will literally destroy itself to provide that protection. Very much like how Formula One racecars come apart to protect the driver. So that means in practical terms that the tradeoff for the Smart owner is that you must carry full coverage at all times, because accidents will generally total the car outright.(ie - not just because the airbags went off) |
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There are always going to be people who are very passionate about any vehicle. But what about the rest of us? Get Smart?
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Replying to: pf_flyer (Sep 19, 2007 3:03 am) |
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That's just a mileage number from the Straightline story. I'm not saying there's not going to be a market for the fortwo, but I do think that market is somewhat limitied by the needs of most vehicle owners.
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| having to be a jack-of-all-trades are pretty well dead IMO. These days, people have a list of what they want from a particular purchase and go looking to find a match, then draw up a different list for a different purchase. | |
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