Published:
9 March 2015The Smart Fortwo wouldn’t be a well-priced city car even if it had four seats. Prices start from just over £11k for an entry-level 1.0-litre car – which you could spend on a very nice five-door Volkswagen Up in pretty rich specification and still make a relative saving on your insurance compared with the Smart.
Worthy of note also is that the Smart Forfour, which sacrifices that fabled maneuverability in favour of two extra seats, only costs another £495.
The automatic gearbox is offered on 1.0-litre cars only, at a premium of £995. Turbo-engined Fortwos start at just under £12k, rising to a whisker under £14k for the Premium Plus specifications – and you’ve still got to spend another £900 on that if you want everything on the options list.
People will, of course, because to plenty of Smart buyers there’s simply no competition, but if you’re the sort of person who questions whether your 2.7m city car really needs stainless steel sports pedals or leather upholstery with white stitching, you’re probably not part of the intended buyer demographic.
Even the faithful will be interested in the Fortwo’s fuel economy, though, and in our hands it fell well short of the 67.3mpg average claimed by Daimler. Admittedly, that evidence is anecdotal. The 43.1mpg average was recorded from the trip meter because the True MPG testing kit was foiled by the Smart’s incredibly hot exhaust gases.
