For about 3 years, I owned a Smart car. That ended around December 2009. For every positive thing I could say over the car.....there must have been three negatives.
It was a great car on gas mileage, but you had gently pull it along....to get the 41 miles per gallon. I usually averaged 28 mpg.
It was great to park in the city.
It maxed out at 130 kph (80 mph).
On the autobahn with a wind? You could feel any abrupt change in the wind, and any speed above 110 kph was dangerous.
I burned oil from day one on....usually half a quart every six weeks.
In snow and ice, it was crap. I reached a point where on the second winter....I bought a hundred pounds of sand, and place it on the passenger feet area.
The glass roof? In July and August....the temperature made the interior impossible when I got off work. I'd have to lower the windows and wait six to eight minutes for the interior to cool off.
The gas tank held 22 liters (5.8 gallons). I typically filled it up every three and a half days.
The AC unit was crap. It maxed out on power (top use power) at 34 C. Any outdoor temperature above that....give up, lower the windows and just suck air.
Headlight burn out? You needed a kid (about age 7) to reach in to yank out the old bulb and insert the new one in. Otherwise, you paid a mechanic for a full hour....to take the whole front-end off the car....to put the bulb in).
It was surprisingly easy to enter/exit the car. In fact, even if you were 450 pounds....the car was simple to enter.
There was no exit on the bottom of the car for oil to drain. My mechanic explained this to me....saying you needed a suck-up particular system to suck the oil out (which he didn't have). So I had to use professional high-grade mechanics for the stupid oil change.
The speaker for the radio (only FM) was cheapest you could possibly imagine.
After selling it.....I regarded this car as one of the most dangerous vehicles I've ever owned in my life.
2 comments:
You are a brave man driving that thing, it smaller than a golf cart. That is almost as vulnerable as riding a motorcycle. Saving gas is on thing but I would rather have a minimal feeling of safety. I’m still looking at EV myself.
I should note this....before I got into the Smart car experiment...I actually went down and looked over the Smart sports car (the Roadster). 80 Hp. You had to get into an unusual entry body angle (to throw yourself into the vehicle), and getting out meant putting a hand on the door edge to slide out. The test-drive? It felt like a charged-up go-cart. Logic dictated against it (my wife being there and shaking her head figures into this).
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