Test Driving a Smart

When I travelled to Paris back in year 2000, I saw the Smart car for the first time. I took tons of pictures of it from every angle, and wondered if I'll ever get to see or drive one back home in Canada because there are many foreign cars that never get imported to North America. Fortunately, the Smart Car made its debut into the Canadian Market late last year, but supply was short and demand was high everywhere in Canada. So, seeing the Smart on the street was far in between, let alone the possibility of driving one. Though I'm interested of getting one someday, I doubt I have the opportunity to drive one unless someone I know bought one. However, I was able to test drive one on the weekend, not through a friend, but rather through an Autoshare program (a network of cars that are rent-able based on hourly rate as oppose to the typical daily rental cars) that I joined recently - perphaps another weblog about its details in the future.

I picked up the car early on Saturday morning, and I drove it to my parent's place as a surprise to see what kind of a reaction I might get. My mom and brother were amazed to see me pulling up the driveway with the Smart, and immediately questioning me if I bought it? But I had to disappoint them that it's a shared vehicle from the Autoshare program. My parent lives in a quite neighbourhood so when I pull up the Smart in-front of my parent's place, the first thing they noticed was the noise that the car makes. Smart car runs on diesel, though it has a much smaller engine comparing to a diesel engine truck, it has the same rumbling noise that one hears from any diesel engine. So driving a Smart car early morning in a quite neighbourhood may wake up a few people, but under any normal situation, one would not noticed the engine noise at all.

It was fun driving the Smart car; the steering (without power steering) was pretty good and responsive, and the handling isn't bad at all. I (5 feet 7) felt very comfortable driving inside the Smart given its small appearance from the outside. However, the real test on the driving comfort will happen when a friend of mine, who is about 6 feet 3, gets to test drive it in the near future. The only issue that I have with the Smart is its stiff brake; I found I had to step on the brake quite hard to stop the car, and it does not have the light gradual braking response that I find in most Japanese cars. So, I had quite a few hard stops test driving the Smart car but it may smooth out in time after its break in period because the car I rented only had about 2000km on the odometer.

So, would I recommend it? Yes, if you don't plan to drive it over long distance (over 3 hours) because I doubt it has the same comfort that one gets in bigger cars, like the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord for long trips, but it's a blast to park in our congested parking space in the city. The one thing I would like to have is a 4WD (four-wheel-drive) model for better power distribution since Smart car was designed with a rear-mounted drive engine, it will skid alot in our Canadian Winter driving conditions. With Smart's small engine (50hp), 4WD would also help gets it out of icy snow banks. It will be interesting to see how Smart handles in our Canadian Winter, but I wouldn't want to test drive one in a highway this Winter unless it's equipped with Winter tires!

Comments

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