Chopper

74ish in real motoring is about right on an EQ. If you need more then a city car isn't the vehicle to he looking at.

Check tyre wear, check pressures...and check tyre age. At 6-7ish years a tyre is borked no matter how unworn it may be, the compounds that make the material pliable at the microscopic level will have broken down and the tyre won't behave as it should. That phenomenon is what killed Paul Walker.

If it counts, I've owned one of my bicycles since 1983, 37 years ago. The other 8 are much newer.

I'm currently 29 years with the same Yamaha. If I eat healthily and exercise I could still make 80 years with it!

Aye, my sister has the 451 CDI. In some ways its "better", but the ride isn't one of them (I still like it a lot though).

It not will creep, regardless of what the handbook says - there is no torque converter. Mine never did. If you don't believe me that's entirely you're business, but I guarantee you're about to spend a lot of money on a car that will behave no differently. Let me know when you've had your clutch changed.

It definitely will not creep. It's a manual box, but instead of cables or linkages attached to the bottom of a gear stick there's a system of robotised servo controls so it mimics the auto changes of a proper slush box. There's no torque converter full of fluid to allow it to creep the car forward with the drivers foot off the gas. Unless you drive like Lewis Hamilton on acid you'll get plenty of warning before the clutch goes. You'll start to get good old fashioned clutch slip and revs rising when pulling away, just as on a conventional manual car. I'd be reluctant to spend hundreds of pounds on a new clutch for a car thats probably not worth a grand anyway (at least here they're not) until the clutch is actually starting to misbehave, which at the moment it isn't. As an aside, they're nice cars. They're obviously close relatives of the Colt, but there are a lot of detail mechanical changes to the point where surprisingly few items are directly compatible between the two. Much better finished than the Colt and nicely appointed, but in typical Smart style they priced it way too high with no material justification, cynically hoping for vast profits from a market segment that turned out not to exist - people buy small cars because they're cheap to buy and run, and the moment they're not cheap to buy then they're really of little interest to that market. Smart were geared up to produced 600 a day, but were on average selling only 40 a day across the whole of Europe at one point. Unsurprisingly, they pulled the plug. Sadly, it's a lesson that Smart have never completely learned.

You got 2 inches of suspension travel. No matter what you do short of lift kits or major chassis work, that is the limiting factor.

You mention the tyre sizes...the 450 stability system is very prone to throwing sulks over tyre size. It's not unknown for owners to fit new tyres to one axle but not the other and for that tiny differential to be sufficient to cause problems. Fairly well known issue over here where the 450 is (or was) a very common car. With such light weight and a tiny wheelbase the system is calibrated on a razor's edge to give it half a chance of keeping the car in line, and it really is very good (the Smart system was transplanted into the A class as part of the redesign to cure the inconvenient falling over problem) but the upshot is that it is very sensitive to the boots.

I felt a bit Ill looking at that. What a horrible thing to do to a leakster.

Mercedes dealers by and large couldn't care less about Smart customers. The only reason they're Smart dealers at all is because Daimler tell them they can't have the Mercedes franchise if they don't have the Smart franchise as well, so there's little genuine interest in their Smart customers, who don't bring in the same kind of profit that MB customers do.

Oh. I know my eyes aren't the best as I age, but even I can see a police car without its gumball machine lit. So it seem could everyone else in the video, though the nearest driver was definitely HUA.

The cop had no headlights either? Does no one use their lights over there?

Blimey, I wonder why he didn't stop for the Feds?

I recall in the Army in Germany...it took 29 inches of snow to finally defeat the Landies (we measured, we were impressed!). I've never got stuck in the snow in any car, 4wd, AWD, FWD or RWD, and never managed to go off the road for a little jolly either. Some cars and tyres are better suited than others, but none of it compensates for a fundamental lack of driving ability. The most important component is the loose nut behind the wheel.