Smart Car review: Fun to drive on city streets, but on the highway ...

We just returned from a week-long vacation, and on a lark, we rented a Mercedes-built Smart Car for a day just to see what what we were missing by not being on the waiting list for one here in Dallas. The Smart Car, for those of you who aren't car jockeys or desperate to squeeze every last mile from your gas tank, is basically a overgrown, gasoline-powered, duded-up golf cart extremely popular in Europe and just making its debut in the U.S. for between $12,000-$17,000 or so.

First off, the Smart Car is a great ice-breaker if you want to meet people. We drove it for a day and spent much of the time talking with people who wanted to know what the car was like. While filling it up with gas (rated at 33/41 mpg, but we drove it less than 100 miles, so we can't comment on that), an ambulance driver popped his head in the open window and said: "I hope I don't see you in one of these sometime in the future", referring to the car's pretty-small frame. Another guy, a parking lot attendant, just about forgot to collect the parking fee while he was looking inside the vehicle: "I want to save gas money, too," he says, "but geez, this is going too far."

Honestly, the car seemed pretty cheaply put together: It was pretty much plastic on the dash and the doors felt kind of flimsy, but the car has done extremely well in safety ratings and crash tests. We were driving around Las Vegas with daytime temperatures over 105 degrees, and the Smart Car's air-conditioner could barely keep up, plus the AC was so noisy we could barely hear the tinny-sounding radio without jacking up the sound to an otherwise deafening level. And the automatic-transmission car we drove had an odd hesitation while shifting from first to second gear, and it sputtered a bit every time we pressed on the accelerator after stopping at a red light. Once we hit 40 or 45 mph, though, the car had a very smooth ride.

Still, inside there was plenty of room for two people, and the seats were comfortable if not cushy. And we were driving a convertible, with the top sliding back and forth effortlessly and providing a choice of either a sunroof or full open-sky top. I've seen a few driving around Dallas, and I think they would be great vehicles if your driving is limited to city streets, but I'd be leery of driving around on I-30, I-35, Central Expressway or any other freeways (full disclosure: we didn't): No matter what the safety ratings say, I'd be scared.

Comments

[AL MOORE]

I am driving my smart fortwo on I-59 110 miles each workday. Once you get the hang of the big truck airflow its great. With full AC I'm using 3.1 galons each day for work. The good part is that at 75mph I don't have to answer all those questions. That got old after a month or so.

[Norman Alston]

What we need here is what I believe we used to call a paradigm shift. The SmartCar is not the answer, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. "The Answer" doesn't exist yet, but we shouldn't cling so tenaciously to our old habits of 8 cylinders per person while we wait. And we shouldn't let those that do and the weight of their metal influence those of us who are ready to use less gas and less raw material.

[Dallas]

@norman

The "answer" does exist. It's called public transportation. And it's a shame that so many suburbs around Dallas were too short sited to think they might need one in the future. I don't wish this on Arlington, but it is going to be pretty funny when they can't get people from North Dallas to come watch the games because there is no easy way to get there. Think about it, $150 for a "cheep" ticket + $20 for gas + $20 for parking + $20 for a hot dog and a beer makes for a very expensive way to spend an evening by yourself.

Oh and a smart car is very safe. Safer than most cars. It's basically a race car aluminum roll cage not much else there. It's the huge bulky SUV's that are dangerous. How much energy is behind a 2000 Kilogram steel monstrosity traveling at 70 mph? A lot. It's a shame that most people don't understand energy, we'ld have a lot fewer tailgaters.

[Aren Cambre]

I am no defender of SUVs (although I support the right of consumers to make the ill-informed decision to purchase them), but the tests saying Smart cars are safe seem to assume collision with an inanimate, nonmoving object. Once you collide with a much heavier, moving object (i.e., any other vehicle in the road, especially a truck or SUV), all bets are off.

E.g, suppose two cars of equal weight do a head on at 25 mph. It's probably survivable by properly restrained passengers.

Now try the same crash with a SUV and a Smart car. The Smart car will actually contact the SUV and then go backwards or in some other direction. The crash forces on the Smart passengers will be far greater than on the SUV passengers, who won't decelerate nearly as quickly. If in a "bad case scenario" the Smart was going forward at 25 mph but in the collision suddenly started going backwards 15 mph, if physics memory serves me right, net crash forces would be like crashing into a cement block at 40 mph.

The Smart car's MPG is surprisingly to a Honda Civic. That begs the question: why bother with the Smart car's annoyances when you can do almost as well with the Civic?

[RL]

I'm sorry, but 33/41 is just far from impressive for an expensive golf cart. My Acura TSX (4-cyl) got 37 MPG on the way home this weekend, and that includes a ton of stop-and-go holiday congestion.

I suppose consumers are frothing at the mouth for anything that *appears* to be fuel efficient... just like how they used to want SUVs that *looked* safe (ignoring their lack of agility and tendency to roll or fishtail)

[Dallas]

"If in a "bad case scenario" the Smart was going forward at 25 mph but in the collision suddenly started going backwards 15 mph, if physics memory serves me right, net crash forces would be like crashing into a cement block at 40 mph."

Not exactly. That would be true if we were talking about billiard balls where the collisions have almost perfect transfers of energy. But we are not talking about solid balls. Cars today are designed with absorption in mind. Some of the energy is lost to crumple joints that take some of the energy. A common one that every car is required to have is a bumper. The job of a bumper is to absorb energy in a collision. Another is the air bag for the driver and passenger.

Worse case scenario I believe is not head on, but rather a "T-Bone" collision where one vehicle slams into another vehicles side at a high speed. This gives the car a high chance of roll, which is very deadly because of the likely hood of smashing ones head on a nearby side window. (Assuming one is wearing a safety belt to begin with and few vehicles have side curtain air bags.) I think this is where the Smart car safety comes into play. The low riding smart car is much less prone to roll than a large SUV. SUVs roll all of the time, and you can easily feel the vehicle lean due to centrifugal forces anytime you are making a sharp turn.

Couple this with the fact that SUV drivers are more likely to drive aggressively, and you have the makings for trouble. BUt I do have one question, it was said that consumers should be have the right to make bad choices, but should they be allowed right if the choice could potentially kill some one? Personally, if a family member of mine was killed in an accident involving an SUV driver, I would probably push for manslaughter just like I would a drunk driver.

[Norman Alston]

Lively discussion.

I have personally watched the video of a Smart Car and an E-Class in a slightly offset head-on collision. The iridium safety cell of the Smart Car protected the occupants from collapsing metal, but the resultant movement of the smaller vehicle was something like a golf ball being struck by a driver. Aren is certainly correct; there is no getting around the physics. The thing is, however, most of us live with this mis-match every day anyway. Unless one drives a semi or a cement truck, there are always things on the road that will do that to our passenger cars, including the beloved Suburbans. Even more so the motorcycles, scooters and bicycles. Yet people motor happily and safely around our City in/on these every day.

So the concern I hear seems to be coming from those who wish to be a little further up the automotive food chain. That's the paradigm shift I'm referring to; the longer we cling to the idea of monster trucks as passenger vehicles, or base our automotive decisions on the perceived percentage of cars on the road that are smaller and theoretically more vulnerable than our own, the longer it will take for a societal shift to cars that use less energy to produce and to operate.

Regarding public transportation, I enjoy it when it's available, but that seems only to work in absolutely the most densely populated locations like New York or London and even there cars are prevalent. On a recent trip to NYC, I tried to take public transportation from my urban East Dallas home to DFW, which meant bus to train to bus, to yet another bus to terminal. Working with DART schedules, it took longer to get from my house to the airport than the flight from DFW to LGA. And if those three buses were half full or less, do you think I would have saved any energy. I don't. Public transportation is essential, useful, even fun, but is not the whole answer any place in the world. It still comes down to making better choices in personal transportation.

I placed my SmartCar reservation in October.

[Aren Cambre]

Dallas: that was just a hypothetical. But the fact is that in a collision of virtually any type where the colliding vehicles have very different masses, the larger-massed vehicle almost always wins. Compare collision between 0.04 lb bug and my car. I win.

We're on the same page about SUV maneuverability. Their crash advantages seem to be negated and then some by less agility, although ESC apparently makes a huge difference in that department.

As for your views of SUVs and manslaughter, har har, funny. My mid-sized 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo weights a little over 2X the Smart cars and is even heavier than some SUVs. Are you gonna charge me with manslaughter, too?

[Jay Ramirez]

Fuel economy was not the point of Smart Car designers. This car does extremely well in heavily populated areas of Europe for its main design purpose: it's easy to park. The Smart Car was designed so that its length would roughly equal the width of a standard sized car. This way, two Smart Cars could fit into a parallel parking spot. I honestly don't see why someone in Dallas would buy one, there is plenty of parking here and destinations are spread far apart. However in a tightly packed metropolitan city like London where you drive very little and have a parking problem, this much more sense. If you've been in Rome, parking is absolutely ridiculous.

[dallas]

"As for your views of SUVs and manslaughter, har har, funny. My mid-sized 1997 Chevrolet Monte Carlo weights a little over 2X the Smart cars and is even heavier than some SUVs. Are you gonna charge me with manslaughter, too?"

Not necessarily. Of course this would depend on a lot of decisions you made before the accident. How fast were you going? Were you talking on a cell phone? Does your car have a cartoonish hammer on the top designed to smash any other car that comes near it? All of these things should be taken into account. I think the size of the car that you choose to drive should also be considered. Was it really necessary for you to be driving down the road in your Monte Carlo? Possibly. Was it really necessary for you to be driving down the road in your jacked up 4x4 monster truck that rolled over and smashed the other car killing the person inside? Probably not.