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Smart ForFour - Road Test

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The very first Smart with four seats and five doors went on sale in the UK on 1st September.

Inherent to all Smarts, is the Tridion safety cell, an extremely rigid safety cage, in silver, black or titanium, which on the ForFour is exposed and is teamed with a choice of 30 exterior colour combinations. In my opinion, if you want a car with individuality and ‘look at me’ styling, then you would choose to have the Tridion a different colour to the rest of the car, which immediately gives it character. There is a beautiful dark green metallic colour which changes in different lighting, complemented by a silver Tridion, which I completely fell in love with.

At launch there are two design and equipment lines, the Pulse and the top of the range Passion. Currently there is a black limited edition priced at £7,997 otr, which will be replaced with the Pure design in 2005. Features include scratch and dent resistant panels, air conditioning, RDS radio and CD, alloy wheels, leather steering wheel, and fog lamps. Owners can choose between a plastic roof, a panoramic glass roof and an electric glass sunroof.

The interior has what Smart calls a lounge concept. The backrests of the two front seats fold down so that they are almost level with the rear seats to create a large horizontal seat surface. Lounge pads with a matching trim extend the seat backs of the rear seat bench at the sides and give them a rounded finish at the rear side doors. While the passengers in the Smart Forfour relax, they can use the folding, axially rotatable twinface multifunction armrest, which is located between the front seats and can be used as either a storage compartment or a cup-holder. Just as pleasant as relaxing in the lounge of your home! If you push the rear seats back, you can actually stretch your legs out as a rear passenger, yet there is still ample boot room.

All Smart Forfour models are equipped with the electronic stability programme (ESP) and disk brakes on both the front and the rear axle are standard. The anti-lock braking system (ABS) including electronic brake-force distribution is also integrated with ESP. There is a full-size airbag for driver and front passenger, side airbags for front seats and three-point belt systems on all seats.

There is a range of five powerful engines to choose from, including two responsive diesel engines built by Mercedes Benz. It will be the first time that customers will be able to buy a diesel Smart in the UK, which will be a 3 cylinder 1.5 litre engine with 68bhp and 95bhp. The three petrol engines offer a much higher horsepower from a small cylinder capacity engine, than many of its competitors and include a 1.1 litre 3 cylinder, 1.3 litre 4 cylinder, and 1.5 litre 4 cylinder. I found the 1.1 litre quite torquey for around town driving.

Another Smart first is the introduction of a 5 speed manual gearbox, while still offering Smart’s softouch automated 6 speed gearbox as an option.

The ForFour is so easy to drive and steering is firm and precise. A frames do not obstruct vision and in fact, visibility is good all round.

Prices start at £7995 for the special launch black edition and go up to £12,370 for the 1.5 litre diesel Passion ForFour. The Smart ForFour is one of the smartest cars I have driven for a long time.

Sue Cooke