Why I drive a weird little car… A Smart Roadster

[smart142 605]

Practical Motoring.au

 

Stephen Harrison

19 March 2017

 

 

Is it electric? If I had a dollar for every time that question has been asked I would have enough spare change to buy another weird little car.

MY REGULAR DRIVE is a 2004 SMART Roadster, a product of Mercedes-Benz and closely related to the SMART ForTwo (had one of them in the family fleet too) but with a very different character and capability.

It was a sales disaster for MB, teething problems and serious warranty costs through water damaged electronics led to MB pulling the pin in 2006. For Australia, the pricing and positioning as part of the Mercedes range was never going to work; $40K on-road with high-end dealer servicing costs was never going to stack up well against the likes of an MX-5. Only around 200 made it to Australia and some of those cars took years to sell.

 

They came stuffed full of inherent flaws and quirkiness. Built on a city car platform and weighing more than it should with limited factory and aftermarket support. 700cc, 3 cylinder 2 valve engine with Turbo. Complex electronics that are difficult to modify. Slow, robotised 3-speed transmission with 2-speed final drive (so 2×3 = 6 speed sequential). Poor steering feel with excessive turns lock-to-lock. Water leaks potentially killing the electronics and/or growing a nice crop of carpet mould. Slow, really slow… 0-100kph well over 10 seconds and a fast one is still over 8 seconds. It’s noisy and harsh on the highway…

 

But… there are many great things about this car. It drives far better than it has any right to. It is rare, few in Australia originally and falling fast as they get written off by insurance companies for having bent radio antenna. You will be entertained by the ‘what is it?’, ‘is it electric?’ questions from strangers, in particular when you are asked while in the process of filling with 98.

 

Although you will be left behind by a Prius in a straight line, the Roadster exhibits snarling, farting, whistling character with perceived level of performance well above the reality. The feel of driving pretty much like you stole it, but without the overt antisocial display that attracts the wrong sort of attention. It’s tiny, a new classification of parking spots become available to you if you can perform the correct gymnastics to squeeze through the low door openings.

 

Although tiny, Germans designed it for 2-metre tall occupants and with a retractable/removable roof to let the sky in. The HVAC works well and the instruments and controls are logically laid out but with an element of ‘funky’ (as is the SMART way).

 

Think of this weird little car as the Chihuahua version of a Lotus Elise, it just doesn’t know it isn’t a real sportscar. You can’t get a mid-engined, turbocharged, convertible European car at a lower entry and running price.

 

Mine has evolved from an abused, stock standard poverty pack, to an abused but maintained and sensibly modified experience. Working out how to modify these things isn’t necessarily easy or cheap, but with some research and sensible exploitation of friendships and social media networking the cost becomes less of an issue.

 

A full wheel and tyre upgrade cost less than the cost of a pair of tyres on my 4WD and you can go very sticky without fussing about tyre life. Adjustable suspension was a bolt-on affair although getting the settings to work so you can steer the thing took a few goes. The engine can be left alone internally, responding well to tweaking the wastegate actuator and loading a new ECU map. The lift in torque, extended rpm range and available performance largely offsets the poor gearbox via less need to shift gear. I went a bit further with modifications and a remap that I thought might stretch the friendship with reliability, but has been rock solid.

 

Keeping the modifications simple and to fairly high standards, I haven’t broken anything while having improved the dynamic and aural experience.

 

The Roadster has been a pleasant place to be during a commute and has been used for weekend trips, trackday work, hillclimbs and even a 4WD trial.

 

 

Recently, I went looking for a replacement and came up blank, everything I looked at and drove was more powerful, faster, more comfortable, safer and less weird… but to make them fun around the suburbs you had to drive in a style likely to get you arrested.

 

So the Roadster remains my most driven car as well as the cheapest to run.

With appropriate service from a specialist the Roadster is solidly reliable, wears out tyres and brakes by years rather than kilometres and only exceeds 6L/100km on a racetrack

.

Maybe this car defines me as an enthusiast, or a nut job with a fetish for weird little cars, but I’m not alone, I have found a number of Roadster owners also own either a Land Rover D3/4, RRS or a Lotus as their ‘other car’. This surely makes me a special kind of nut as I have the D4 and Europa.

 

When it comes down to it, a weird car is only really weird if you don’t understand it. I understand mine, but why are you driving that weird hybrid? The greatness of a car is subjective on many levels, so don’t over analyse it if you can just enjoy the drive.

 

As a final point, weird little cars bring people together technically and socially. I have personally made some great friendships and very useful technical connections from the simple process of ‘talking about our little cars’.

 

 

https://practicalmotoring.com.au/readers-write/why-i-drive-weird-little-car-smart-roadster/

[MikeT 747]

BRABUS roadsters will be legal to import in a year.....

[darren 192]

On 2017-03-19 at 9:58 PM, smart142 said:

When it comes down to it, a weird car is only really weird if you don’t understand it.

True. 

[booneylander 37]

I'd really like to pick up a Roadster and swap a CDI into it. Would be the perfect balance of sport and economy for the type of driving I do.

[MikeT 747]

Oh, that would be so S L O W....the roadster body is 100 kg heavier than the fortwo, and the drag coefficient is 0.44 instead of 0.37.  It would be scary slow, probably like 0-100 in 25 seconds, when remapped!

[booneylander 37]

Very interesting, I would have thought the drag coefficient of the roadster to be much better than the "brick" style of the fortwo.

 

For the sake of argument, while the drag coefficient of the normal fortwo is better than the Roadster, the frontal area of the 450 is 1500mm by 1510mm (2.265m^2) and the Roadster sits at 1192mm by 1615mm (1.925m^2).
 

So;
(fortwo) 0.37*2.265 = 0.838
(roadster) 0.44*1.925 = 0.847
(roadster coupe) 0.38*1.925 = 0.732

In other words, the roadster would be about 1% less efficient in real aero drag and the roaster coupé would be just over 10% more efficient. Keeping in mind I didn't subtract the area under the car between the wheels just to keep things simple, and we're not factoring in the little bit extra rolling resistance from bigger tires on the roadsters etc.
 

The base roadster came with a 60hp 700cc petrol, so I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that a remapped CDI with a lot more torque than the gasser should have no trouble being at least similar in performance to the 700cc petrol, and in fact a remapped CDI in a roadster coupe body should be noticeably quicker than a stock CDI in a fortwo, even carrying around a large "passenger" (extra 100kg).

Did the regular roadster and the coupe come out at the same time, or did the coupe lag behind a bit?

Sean

[MikeT 747]

Same time.  The challenge with the cdi is that the power band is so narrow that there is a lot of shifting.  This makes the car slow against the watch.  The rev limit on the gas engines was 2000 RPM higher so you could hold the gears longer and that makes a big difference in the driving experience.

 

I drove a roadster-coupe in the suburbs of Paris in 2005 and it was adequate in acceleration with the 82 HP engine.  With 60 it would have been a dog, even with it revving to 6500 RPM.  With 60 HP but a 4400 RPM rev limit, not so much.  The BRABUS version with 101 HP would make it a proper little sports car.

 

The tires on the roadster were wider than the fortwo so rolling resistance is also to be considered in addition to Cd and SCd as you rightly pointed out.

 

i just wouldn't consider that swap.  The roadster to get is the coupe with 101 HP.

[booneylander 37]

You're probably right. I'm just so fond of the CDI is all. I'm sure the 101hp brabus roadster coupe is still very miserly on fuel anyway.

[MikeT 747]

I think so....Plus the gas engines sound amazing!