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Spotted a red on black smart in someone's driveway on High Point Rd., in the most exclusive neighbourhood in Toronto.

How is American beer like sex in a canoe?

Don't cut. The psycho-spider eyes look creepy.Are fog lights so important to you that you have to work around them?Refinish the headlight surrounds in chrome to look just like all other modern smarts. The peanut shape should be seen for what it is and not look like someone did a 180-degree modification.

Could it be that they mean that when the batteries expire the owner will just continue to drive with the combustion engine? Or, the hybrid has a short life span? Batteries don't last forever. It worries me to think that there may be no motivator for battery maintenance; A hybrid gets off scot-free with government blessings and incentives for the short-term, then defeats its own fuel efficiency later on.

I'm starting to put a lot of the blame on the Bridgestone B340 summer tires (standard issue for the pure) for my perception of the car's insufficient handling. If you own a pure, the first thing you should consider doing before looking at wider wheels & tires is change your summer rubber to Continental EcoContact (standard issue on the pulse and passion). They will make a big difference.

Being able to use in during Winter will not assure a working system in Spring/Summer. I've said it before, but who will believe me: I was able to activate my A/C during the Winter on several occasions, even in sub-freezing temperature.

Your Board Style in your profile is subRebel (simple, New Year's). Change it back to subRebel (simple) or Aphrodite, whichever you prefer.I bet it was a scroll wheel incident (didn't know the pull-down menu was in focus when trying to scroll the page).

Got one just now, when going back to the Feedback forum after reading darren's post.The error has nothing to say, except at the bottom it said it encountered a 404 not found in trying to access an ErrorDocument.But it's all random hit-and-miss stuff. The bulletin board doesn't just isn't intermittent in nature. Probably the hosting company.

Spotted LIL MAO again this morning, Eglinton Ave. E. & Leslie. She waved this time (the driver, not the car). She drives a lite white passion coupé with silver tridion and bungee red interior. === The Tear Garden - Blobbo

My standards can come back up, now that I have improved grip around corners. The handling is much better. Perhaps I can drive on gusty freeways again without the worry of being pushed out of my lane.The 145-section Continental Summer tires have a radical tread pattern that you won't see on the Bridgestone equivalent. It is as if these tires were designed for added traction, probably with sub-compact cars in mind. The Bridgestones are ordinary in comparison. However, the 175-section tires are virtually indistinguishable from each other.This may have just solved one of my long-standing issues with the car.

I let smart Canada know about my problem and they have the Service Manager looking at my case.I would suggest others escalate accordingly where they see fit. Fixing the A/C needs some oversight, and the message would become pretty clear that there is a problem if there are a lot of customers having their complaints heard. I'm a little doubtful, though, of "informal" representation -- where's the critical sign-off of customers to say that they wholely endorse the position, or even of absolute identification? They should require your VIN#.

I underestimated the B340 longevity, but the truth is that after two years I was longing to get rid of them. The Bridgestone B340 Summer tires are ass. They are controlled skating. I got a fresh set of Conti EcoContacts installed today and for the short drive home I got to feel what just about everyone else has been feeling all along: A more authoritative, "weigtier" steering grip. Time to unlearn some things.

Every time I see a car and recognize that little green circle decal in the lower corner of the side windows, I think, "Sucker tax". Many dealerships say you have no choice on this, that they get it done before the car arrives on the lot. If you ever wanted to pursue window etching you could always purchase it on your own and for less than what the dealership will charge.

Business Manager will tell you anything to support bringing in more profit to the dealership. And by your description they are warping the truth. 99.9% of customers buy rustproofing from them? Yeah, right. Protected for 4 years? The car comes with surface corrosion guarantee beyond 4 years. I purchased from Midtown and was never asked or offered rustproofing. No offence intended to anyone, but are you sure you're picking the right dealership? People go to Performance in St. Catherines because they're in love with the idea that there is a great dealership and they're on your side. C'mon, the smart doesn't earn that kind of support, and it's the salesperson's job to tell you what you want to hear. I'm very happy with Midtown's no-nonsense approach and that as a Corporate dealership they had certain subsidized advantages over the franchises. For example, car availability and wait time has always been better, and smart Specialists who are paid to be dedicated smart Specialists (vs. on commission so they have to share their time with Mercedes-Benz sales). There's one other thing that Midtown didn't do that franchises love to do because it's a source of gravy: Window etching for supposed anti-theft protection.

We have R134a in our cars, as should all modern cars with A/C. It replaces R12 which had ozone-depleting properties. On the other hand, R134a has a significant Global Warming Potential, can cause asphyxiation if inhaled in quantities (it displaces air), and may cause testicular cancer. Also, its presence in the Earth's atmoshere is increasing. Wiki. Some service tips.

Yeah, I'm tired of the message getting muddled through the effects of cross-region naysaying. There are five of us reporting A/C failure in S. Ontario in the last 24 hours. We go to different dealerships; It's improbable that all of us would have the same outcome. Please respond to my poll question. We shouldn't let this go. Get it serviced. Don't let a dealership cop out with a warranty refill job just make you go away and because they're too timid to get inside the car. Send e-mail to smart Canada asking them why the A/C doesn't last a year in our area. Depending on your warranty-spending habits, you got 1 to 4 years to trial-and-error the solutions. If you just accept what's going on, smart will be off the hook in a couple years and many of us will continue paying for a potentially unfixable (and some feel an essential) component.

Is your smart fortwo cdi's (model year 2006 or earlier) air conditioning failing? By failing I mean that there is neglible or no cooling output. Please respond only if: [*]you have the air conditioning option [*]you can test the A/C during the warm or hot seasons, so that you can best judge the effectiveness [*]your A/C was working effectively last year (before Winter) This poll is limited to Ontario residents to test for regional applicability.

Maybe not isolated. If you recall, my belt was falling apart around the 42,000km mark, and I think there were a couple others reporting a similar scenario of 40,000km or 2 years in use. Certainly if I chose to dismiss the short-lived fwap sound I would have been in trouble without knowing it (I'm not a mechanic); The car drives perfectly normal even after part of the belt splits off. So, people should take note of such a symptom and act on it pretty soon.

I want them to address it here and now on the current model. I'm not going to continue with a car that has an A/C unit that is effectively dead on arrival, and requires annual servicing -- Who said these were well-built cars? Unique design is but one appeal of the car. But the more it frustrates me, the more I'm inclined to look elsewhere for a reliable (if blander) car and tell everyone I know that what they learned about European car reliability through Consumer Reports surveys has it pegged right and it applies especially well to the smart and furthermore this car will cost more in chronic servicing than it will save in fuel. Additional reading: Runaway forfour

Poor or failing A/C is also a sore point for me. This is now three years in a row with a problem. The first year had to do with the logic behind when the A/C engages and smart Canada addressed that with an update. Despite the change, the A/C is never good enough to make up for the car's design as a greenhouse (unrelated to the glass roof). While a glass roof has better tinting, particularly with UV, you can still feel the sun baking you and the interior through the huge windshield and side windows.

In a slow-speed situation -- say a parking lot -- the power steering removes the tire's resistance to pivot, which makes maneuvering quick and effortless. You could steer with a finger.

Second year in a row that I have no effective A/C while coming out of Winter. This year is a bit different, however: I can see the load on the rev counter, but it would appear there is very little charge left (last year, there was no charge left so the compressor didn't start).I did activate the A/C periodically over the Winter, and I saw that it did activate. I'm pretty sure I must have a leak, and I'm getting to be sure now that Winter kills our A/C, with or without our intervention.Mattdaddy, I'm disappointed with your situation. You got a rebuild while I only had a refill. I was looking forward to you saying something positive that would show that the A/C is better than hopeless.

I've encountered this too. It seems that the size limits for sending attachments in PM are much lower than those for the forum.

Try everything, like merging onto a freeway (gun it). If you can find a clear open area, make a sharp turn while increasing your speed to see where the understeer and stability control comes into play.With the rear view mirrors, adjust them so that the sides cover the panorama where the middle one leaves off. For me, the driver's side mirror is out wide, while the passenger's side mirror is just beyond the car body. For my seating position and my height, the top-third of the rear view through the middle mirror is blocked by the car's interior (coupé), but I can see more of the horizon. Overall, you want to see well, but you still have blind spots and shoulder-checks for lane changes are necessary.

Bad smart car driver, running the red light, causing an accident! However, if the victim was driving a smart (for two people in vehicle) instead of a large SUV, there's a better chance they would have been missed. The probability of accident avoidance might have been better, too, assuming he was paying more attention.I wonder if the BMW in the background was thinking, "Typical MB. I could have avoided that."And to get one other thing off my chest, I'm glad to see the myth of driver superiority on other continents taken down a peg.