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With tastes as varied as an Italian seafood eggroll served in a New Jersey Thai restauraunt with a side of grits and foie gras, the GoodCarBadCar.net team had a lot of options when it came time to choose its first long-term test car. There was talk of jumbo SUVs, minivans and, as you've concluded, a Mercedes-Benz developed city car called the smart fortwo.
Picked up at O'Regan's Mercedes-Benz in Halifax, Nova Scotia, our 2009 smart fortwo was kitted out in pure trim with just one option: air conditioning. Standard equipment included power windows and locks with keyless entry, a cornucopia of safety equipment (ABS and stability control most importantly), two ridiculously powerful headlights, and a fantastic little 2-speaker stereo with an auxiliary jack in the glovebox. Our smart fortwo is Crystal White with a tridion safety cell in black.
Last July, Mercedes-Benz Canada was offering a Mobility Rebate of $2,000 right off the bat for every smart fortwo. That took the smart fortwo pure's base price from $14,990 to $12,990. The charge for air-con was $850 for a grand total of $13,840 before delivery. At that time smart was also throwing in free maintenance for 3 years/54,000 kilometres, the amount of time the smart car was going to be in our care. For the record, smart Canada's new car warranty is 4 years/80,000 km.
GoodCarBadCar.net's Driven review of the smart fortwo offers up a thorough version of what it's like to actually drive the car. In this space then, an exhaustive detailed account isn't necessary. You should note, however, that the kind of driving we do around these parts is almost completely of the city variety. This resulted in almost always desiring to be back in the smart fortwo after a day or two in anything else. Of course, for a road trip across the continent, a Subaru Outback or Toyota Camry or Ford Taurus SEL would be preferable. But after a little bit of time careening through the city of Halifax in the aforementioned Outback, Camry, or Taurus, the smart car felt right and proper; efficient and intelligently designed.
A short while after acquiring the smart car, The Good Car Guy laid out the Top 5 Facts After One Month With A Smart Fortwo. Not long after that, GoodCarBadCar.net covered the Top 5 Bad Smart Fortwo Facts. Of those five bad facts, only the #1 complaint has worsened or garnered any genuinely aggravated responses. It had only been two months when first described, but the smart had developed some squeaks and rattles. For the most part, the squeaks and rattles haven't worsened. The sun visors buzz against the headliner when the weather is humid - that hasn't changed - but a good whack of the visor against the roof temporarily cures the problem anyway. Thankfully, the driver's seatbelt no longer yelps. Yet recently the passenger seat began babbling like a pebble-bottomed brook. It only happens when a passenger is present; it worsens with the weight of respective passengers; it can't be sourced; and it drives everyone crazy on washboard roads. This problem is less than a month old and hasn't been discussed with a a service representative at O'Regan's Mercedes-Benz.
Speaking of service, there's only been the one. It went by smooth as silk and was free as a bird. Get the full rundown at Fuel The Smart. Speaking of Fuel The Smart....
The most easily conceived notion after a year with a 2009 smart fortwo pure? Well, the Honda Fit was one similarly-priced candidate for the job last July. With air-conditioning, the Fit is priced at $15,780. An automatic transmission would take that up to $16,980, about $3,000 more than the smart. Sure, you get more seats and more space. But what if you don't need more seats or more space? Why would you pay an extra $3,000 before the fuel economy advantages and free maintenance are even taken into account for something you don't need? Besides, the Honda doesn't even have power locks or keyless entry or stability control at that price. Therein lies the great thing about requiring little: smart offers a little bit of car for a little bit of money with a lot of equipment, tremendous comfort inside, and the most wonderfully simplistic city driving nature known to North America at this time.
The 1.0L 3-cylinder sounds a bit like a Porsche 911. We park the car wherever we want, and rather easily at that. We've been down rugged dirt roads in the country, driven extensively on snow-covered roads with a rear-engined rear-wheel drive car and all-season tires, and done it all quite cheaply. If GoodCarBadCar.net's smart could talk, it would say, "More please".
Related From GoodCarBadCar.net
One Year With The Smart Fortwo - Numbers
2009 Smart Fortwo Pure Driven
Smart Fortwo Car Wash Photography
Top 5 Bad Smart Fortwo Facts
Top 5 Facts After 1 Month With A Smart Fortwo
Smart Fortwo 3 To Beat
The Good 12 v3.0 Part X - Smart Fortwo
Pounds Per Horsespower, Smart vs Other Small Cars
Smart Fortwo - Replacing Our Long-Termer Across The Pond
Fuel The Smart - Every Fill-Up Analyzed
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