Autopartswarehouse Review: Small but Terrible Car on the Road

After years of waiting, Smart ForTwo is finally headed to the land of free and hometown of the Escalade. If you've been travelling in places exotic like Canada and/or Europe, maybe you have seen the original Smarts scooting and speeding around.  Depending on your point of view, you've either thought, "Those things would never work in America," or "Golly, I wish we had those in America." And now, we can see whose side will win because Roger Pensake is bringing the second-generation Smart two-seater - in coupe and ragtop forms - to his vast dealer network, and he's promising that a $99 deposit will get you a Smart of your own within six months. So far, 30,000 have already signed up for that deal, so it appears that the Age of the Microcar is off to a good start.

Smart car1

Is it scary on the highway?

With a 70-hp three-cylinder hanging over the rear wheels, the ForTwo doesn't have a surfeit of power, but it will climb to an electronically limited 90 mph (which our test car's apparently optimistic speedometer reads as 95 mph). And as you can see the body is only that little to support all the pressure and it's speed. It's wuite fast that it can be used a racing car.

Choosing your line is also important in the Smart, because at 80 mph, you don't want to make a lot of steering corrections. Occasionally I'll pass an eighteen-wheeler and get buffeted with a crosswind, which sets up a white-knuckle seesawing at the wheel, this is really scary right? But this vehicle can be easily be balanced and directed to what the driver wants and get back on line.

You can see the efficiency, convenience and the uses of this little but really helpful ride. And it also looks cool. All told, the Smart will handle any reasonable highway situation you throw at it, but you need to maintain situational awareness at a higher level than in most other cars. You may not be relaxed, but you're never bored, either.

Smart car2