A Big Surprise In Lower Case
by David Finlay (12 May 05)

Despite improving sales during 2004, smart came very close earlier this year to being abandoned by parent company DaimlerChrysler. The brand's future was assured with the acceptance of a recovery package (costing over $1 billion) which, among many other things, involved abandoning development of the formore SUV and discontinuing production of the fortwo-based roadster and roadster-coupé.

Production of the forfour, however, is unaffected. There's a certain irony in this, since the forfour is nowhere near as radical as the original smart city cars. Far from it - this is easily the most mainstream car smart has ever produced, but in business terms it's the one that works best.

Essentially, it's the same thing as the Mitsubishi Colt. The cars are built on the same production line and share the same platform, the same range of engines, and many of the same features, both good and bad. The movable rear seat is one of the good ones - in such a short car you're never really going to get much in the way of either luggage space or rear passenger legroom, but at least here there's a certain amount of flexibility.

A bad feature common to the forfour and the Colt is the use of very thick windscreen pillars. These would be a problem on any car, but on a small one there is the added disadvantage that you inevitably sit very close to at least one of them. This maximises the blind-spot effect and makes city driving a more tense affair than you would expect of something that is at least to some extent a city car.

Despite almost everything mentioned above, the forfour is by no means just a rebadged Colt. The design philosophies of Mitsubishi and smart do eventually begin to diverge, most noticeably in terms of exterior design. The forfour, which I think looks better in real life than in photographs, is refreshingly different without suffering from an overdose of the cutes.

There are two sets of colours to choose from, since the tridion safety cell is always distinguishable from the non-structural panels, and our test car had what I reckon is by far the most effective combination of starlight silver metallic for the panels and titanium (a dark metallic grey) for the cell. Unfortunately, you have to pay extra for this effect, since these colours are options costing £275 and £175 respectively.

More . . .

Back to smart Road Test index
Back to main Road Test index