‘It gets under your skin’
Danny makes a SMART move
When we ran our Smart Citycoupé buyers’ guide a couple of years ago, I was sceptical. There is a huge following for the cleverly packaged toy Mercedes, especially early ones, but I wasn’t sure I could love one.
Time for an education then. I was a Smart virgin. I’d never driven one – I had never even been a passenger. The prospect of ownership was, therefore, intriguing. I love a ‘blank paper’ design and I love a new driving experience; the Citycoupé would deliver both. So when Ben Jones called, I went to investigate – it was a SMART decision.
His June 2002 Smart Citycoupé (Fortwo) Pure, the earliest known ‘2002 restyle’ car in the UK, looked perfect for a novice like me. I was on the train to Wilmslow straight away.
Up close I was struck by the cleverness. It is two-and-a-half metres long, so tall it looks like it will fall over in a gust of wind, has offset passenger and driver seats (the former is 15 centimetres further back) and a really useful two-part rear hatch that means that, if you flop the passenger seat forward, you can carry a fridge. It still looks modern and gives the impression that it is a pre-production prototype someone decided to make without checking with the marketing team… ie: without compromise.
The interchangeable plastic body panels make it an early example of a truly personalisable car, and the prominent steel hemispherical safety-cell (called a Tridion) is, quite frankly, a work of engineering genius. Nicholas Hayek’s original vision was based round this clever cage and the company he founded, MCC (Micro Compact Car AG), is still on the V5 of Ben’s coupé despite MCC being a subsidiary of Daimler/benz Mercedes since 1994 (when Hayek and his team left the project).
Originally branded a Swatch car, the team wanted the Smart to be hybrid or electric and got into bed with VW to achieve this. It didn’t happen, so Daimler-benz took over – dropping the eco drive options and losing the design team in the process.
No matter, the more time I spent with Ben’s Smart, the more I was convinced I needed one in my life. Looking around the car I could find nothing that would stop it being used, however, before the next MOT in May 2020 it will need some welding to its Tridion. Ben is the sort of seller you want – he sent me pictures of the corrosion, was completely
upfront about it and modified the price accordingly. Citycoupés of this era are cheap, and as this one has issues, I was shaking hands on what appeared to be a bargain. The Smart passed its most recent test with no advisories and has only done a few hundred miles since.
Ben bid farewell to a car he had owned for two years, one that, through a friend, he’d known for the previous 11, with sadness: ‘They get under your skin,’ he told me. Driving home, I began to get to grips with why. On 66k miles, the 698cc engine seemed in good health, with just enough urge to keep up with everyone else, while the De Dion rear suspension was allowing me to corner with confidence. It is the ‘Pure’ (basic) spec, but has a number of extras including the fully automatic gearbox feature – which is where the problems started.
The gearchange is an issue. Or not. As I love a car that challenges the driver. If you have ever driven a classic that requires you to double declutch to change gear, then you’ll have some idea as to the amount of time the Smart requires to sort out its own cogs. The ‘automated manual transmission’ from Getrag is undoubtedly clever, the clutch is computer controlled, servo assisted and on this Pure may be driven in fully auto mode or soft tip manual mode. But it is slow and ponderous. Hard work.
After a few days I had mastered getting the best from the ’box, coming off the gas fractionally before the change operation and then back on as the new gear arrived. I ignored the fully automatic mode (achieved by pressing a button on the gear lever) because it was completely laughable.
Most people would count this malarkey as an active negative – not me, I love it. It makes the car all the more interesting to pilot and challenges me to help it achieve its full potential.