Owner of a Smart ForTwo CDI

Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cars, Smart, Transport

As winter 2008 approaches and Xanthe is now at her secondary school, and I have started to get a bit irritated with changing in and out of my motorcycle gear up to six times a day, I had to question the one car family rule again.

Then a Smart Fortwo CDI came up on Autotrader. Now I have always been a fan of the Smart Fortwo, but the CDI has never been sold in the UK. Crazy marketing people - they have no idea.

Anyway, they have always been too expensive for us as a family, and indeed this 60,000 mile one made in 2000 was still quite expensive for a two seater micro car. However these cars are not what they seem. Even today, they are one of the most advanced vehicles on the road, and the design dates back to 1993.

So much to my wife’s disgust I bought it. They are so rare in the UK I just couldn’t miss this. So what is the big deal? Well for a start it is more like a winter motorbike. Although I am OK riding in driving snow (which I did for seven hours once from Newcastle) my pillions are not. So the Smart Car is a big hit there. Also it’s fuel consumption is approaching half that of my motorbike at an average 75mpg but 100mpg possible. Indeed I managed 97mpg for half a tank the other week. My motorbike does a constant 45-55mpg.

I now keep a log of the fuel consumption via ecomodder, so you can see ‘real world’ consumption below, but I am still measuring by (same) fuel pump click stops, and the odometer. To get better accuracy I need a fuel flow meter and a GPS, as the first generation Smarts (G1) like this one, don’t have OBDII CANbus, which means devices like Scanguage can’t be used.

The overall experience is fantastic. The ride is harsh though, compared to our older Mercedes 300 turbodiesel estate, but that car has the best ride in the world.

I think that BMW and Toyota and Daewoo have all not got it right when trying to replicate the Morris Mini phenomenon in the 1960s and the 2CV in the 1940s. For the last decade, it has been the Smart Fortwo that has set the standard. A truly amazing bit of engineering.

I keep a rolling record of the Smart’s fuel consumption, mainly to see how my hypermiling techniques are improving. I’m currently hitting an average