SMART CITY COUPÉ & FORTWO
Fun, tiny and cheap to run – here’s how to find a good ’un
One day a film will be made about Smart, a company set up by Swatch founder Nicolas Hayek to build a forward-thinking city car. Having reached agreement with Volkswagen in 1991 to set up a joint venture, incoming VW CEO Ferdinand Piech put the brakes on the deal when he took the helm in 1993. By 1994 Mercedes was signed up as a partner but within five years Smart had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler-benz, with Hayek disappointed at the city car’s relatively conventional design.
When the Smart City Coupé was launched in 1998 it was meant to change city cars forever. But high prices, an unusual gearbox and only two seats put off many potential buyers. However the Smart enjoyed a cult following from the outset because it bursts with character. Cheap to insure, roomy for two and brilliantly frugal, the Smart makes a lot of sense – the key is finding the right car. Here’s how.
Which one?
All these Smarts have two seats, a three-cylinder engine and an automated manual gearbox, but there were two engine displacements (599cc and 698cc), petrol and diesel editions (the latter didn’t make it here officially) and a choice of roofs. The coupé got either a glass or polycarbonate panel or there’s a cabriolet with an electrically operated cloth roof. There are also left- or right-hand drive cars. There are some diesels about and it’s worth buying one if you do lots of miles as you can easily achieve 75mpg with a diesel, compared with 55mpg from a petrol. Diesels are rare but more reliable than petrols, but it’s a question of sourcing from the UK as it’s not worth shopping in Europe because of the exchange rate. The bigger engine is no more reliable or powerful in standard form than the smaller one, but it is more refined and easier to tune. Left-hand drive cars have a following, especially among motorhome owners. Surprisingly the cabrio is no more sought after than the coupé, as its electric roof mechanism goes haywire and is expensive to fix. The entry-level Pure is largely unloved but the sporty Pulse has a following. The range-topping Passion is the most common and popular of the lot
as it’s the most luxurious; it’s the only one that’s guaranteed to have air-con (it was optional on the other models). The Pure only came with an automated manual gearbox (dubbed Softip); the others have a fully automatic mode (Softouch) or you can execute clutchless gear changes instead. The Brabus is the most powerful of the lot, but it has more demanding service intervals (7000 miles compared with 9,000) although the standard oil cooler does improve reliability.
When buying, your focus should be on condition rather than spec. Smart-sport’s Paul Woolley says: ‘Be wary of very low-mileage cars as they’ll probably have been run cold all the time, which kills the engine. Also scrutinise the service history as many low-mileage cars aren’t serviced very often and an annual service is crucial.’
Bodywork
At the heart of the Smart is a rigid structure called a tridion cell, onto which the front and rear subframes are bolted to carry the mechanicals.