I've been looking at these... my parents recently got a Smart ForFour as a run-around, and to my surprise I rather liked it.

Has anyone got any experience of the coupe/roadster version, pref the Brabus variant?

I've sat in one, but not driven it! Brabus will be better as more power, but even though on paer the lower power one is a bit slow, apparently it doesn't feel it, its supposed to be a really nice drive! I've seen some quite cheap, and they look great (imo) I haven't really heard of many reliability issues.... apparently the auto box is a bit slow to react, have a drive and post a reveiw

I used to own a Smart Roadster.

Terrible car.

Looked good (imho) and the wastegate flutter was great fun in a city centre with the sound echoing off the buildings. The ability to wind the cloth part of the roof back at any speed was another highlight...

However:

The car is just a reorganisation of the subframes from the four2. All the mechanicals are identical. This means:

The steering rack is far too slow for a "sports car." I can't recall how many turns it was from lock to lock, but it was far too many...

The gearbox was positively dangerous. In auto mode, it would always get confused if you pulled onto a roundabout without coming to a complete stop - it would assume you were slowing down and just when you put your foot down, it'd but in the middle of changing in the wrong direction. Using it in its semi-auto mode was fine, but the was a delay of over a second between selecting a gear and actually getting it (it's a manual box with a "tumbler" on it - not even a real auto). Plus you judge the stick forward to go down the gears and backwards to go up, which always seemed back to front to me.

The roof leaked everywhere. But that was to be expected.

And, finally, the thing that made me sell it for a huge loss after only six months:

Just not powerful enough. I had the 80hp version. It was fine in a straight line, but the whole point of buying a rear wheel drive, rear engined car is to get the back end out, and this thing - as a combination of (I think it was) 235 wide rear tyres, only 80hp, and that gearbox which meant you couldn't really control exactly when the power was being put down - couldn't manage it.

It was simply impossible to get any kind of controlled slide out of - all the above and the short wheelbase, just made it impossible. On the odd occassion that you did manage to get the rear out, it was really "snappy" and not progressive. And then you were rapidly trying to wind on lock with the incredibly slow steering rack mentioned above.

In short, don't.

Anyway, here was mine:

Cool, cheers guys! That's the sorta indepth thing that I wanted to read.

Took their other car out today (RX8) which was just rev-tastic. I am craving a petrol!!!

Cool, cheers guys! That's the sorta indepth thing that I wanted to read.

Took their other car out today (RX8) which was just rev-tastic. I am craving a petrol!!!

I like the RX8, but I really dont like the engine, theres a reason why practically all cars have piston engines :dull

If you have a petrol craving a little something from BMW with their legendary straight 6 could be just up your street, what about the Z3 instead of the Smart Coupe, they are reasonably priced, but dont go for a 1.9!!

DXG has got it spot on. The gearbox is a freekin nightmare. I threw a Brabus version about on an airfield and it was sort of fun, but not enough grunt to pull you out of bed really. If you want petrol, the Merc SLK is a hoot