Smart Roadster: Tell Me I'm Wrong

The greatest missed opportunity in recent sports car history? Dan boldly argues the case

If we were to write a PH news story today unveiling a new lightweight sports car with the backing of a major premium manufacturer that combined Caterham style dimensions with modern construction and safety features we'd be all over it, right? Moreover, just imagine if the spec revealed a turbocharged, mid-engined, rear-driven layout, paddle-shifted transmission, clever composite construction with replaceable plastic panels, a usable amount of luggage space, a sub-1,000kg kerb weight, 50mpg+, 120g/km and a starting price of just £11,995? And what if it looked like something that had somehow leapt straight from a designer's sketch pad and onto the road without any of the usual aesthetic compromises?

Fastbacked Roadster Coupe a real looker

Thing is, such a car existed and was launched in the UK a decade ago. That it sank relatively without a trace after just two and a bit years later with worldwide sales of 43,000 - 6,500 of them in the UK - is quite possibly one of the greatest injustices of the recent motoring age. Indeed, I'd argue we should be looking at the Smart Roadster and Roadster Coupe as up there with the Mazda MX-5 or Lotus Elise in the league of game-changing lightweight sports cars.

On a promise
Consider that today Caterham is lauded as the saviour of the minimal performance/maximum fun sports car with a 'new' model based on a 50 year-old design and fitted with a live axle from a Suzuki Jimny. And that said car costs you £14,995. And you have to build it yourself. And pay another £1,250 for a windscreen and roof.

The Seven 160 is a wonderful thing. But it's still a pretty extreme choice with some significant compromises over 'normal' cars. Smart was offering all that, based on a significantly more advanced platform with enough mainstream creature comforts, for considerably less money in 2003. And yet all people want to do is moan about the gearbox.

Styling still looks fresh a decade on

There's another fight to pick about our insatiable appetite for pointless performance but let's just consider the prosecution case against the Smart Roadster for now. That transmission. It's not great. In auto mode it takes an age to shift with gaps between ratios you can count in whole seconds, not the fractions we've become used to in this age of dual-clutch transmissions. Not somewhere you want to be mid-way through an overtake. And if you attempt to bang through the gearbox like a race sequential rather than one robbed from a city car you'll be very, very disappointed. Many were.

Work with it
Advocates will tell you it's not that bad. And if you try to work with it rather than against it and understand the context of weight saving engineering you'll be more generously disposed. Sadly for the Smart we've learned to equate a paddle or sequential selector with an instant action, not the sequence of events traditionally required for changing gear. Plan your shift, watch the revs, lift the throttle, let the gear change go through and then carry on as you would in a manual car and the gearbox speeds up considerably. Left-foot brake, match the road speed to engine revs and it'll do likewise. It may not have a clutch pedal but it's an interactive process that requires thought, planning and coordination. Just the kind of things we manual Luddites go on about, albeit one pedal down on the usual count.

Notchback Roadster saved around 20 kilos

Forget doomed aspirations to supercar-style shifts and instead take geeky delight in the engineering that went into creating a turbocharged engine and sequential gearbox assembly you could seemingly fit in your pocket.

Other criticisms? Well, yes, there were significant problems with sealing and subsequent frying of the electrics that tested the patience of many owners to beyond breaking point. And rather than gift the Smart an Elise-style flick of the wrist steering mechanism the Roadster was saddled with a frustratingly low-geared and underweighted arm-twirler.

Valid criticisms then. But I still don't see them as enough to explain the car's failure.

Forget the stats
Number crunchers will find little to get excited about in the bald stats of course, even the most potent 101hp Brabus versions barely able to break 100hp per tonne once you factor in a driver and other essentials like fuel and a bag of Haribo. Even an MX-5 manages 140hp per tonne, an original S1 Elise in the same ballpark as the new base Caterham's 160hp per tonne. Even the mad V6 Brabus one I briefly drove only made a modest 170hp, thoughts of its supposed six-figure build cost drowned by its madly chuffing turbos and pleasing willingness to bonfire its rear tyres. This in an alarming shakedown run by my chaperone in the Brabus car park 'test track' before handing me the keys, the car itself as mad as the idea of building a reported single-digit run of conjoined twin-turbo V6 engines for customer cars.

Even V6 Brabus only made 170hp

But even in that extreme example driving a Smart Roadster is not about the numbers, it's about the feelgood factor of driving a beautifully styled car that combines lightweight minimalism with truly sophisticated engineering. It really is like an exotic supercar in miniature form and as cool as those miniaturised V8 engines built by home engineers in their sheds to be pointlessly revved on YouTube for the delight of nerds like us.

Rose tints
I have fond memories of several trips to the 'ring in various Roadsters, latterly Brabus ones, where the performance anxiety you'd get from arriving in a faster car disappeared and you could simply enjoy the giant-killing ability derived from unexpected cornering speed. At least on the downhill bits. The uphill slog from Breidscheid was more an opportunity to break out the sarnies and enjoy the passing Eifel countryside - and cars you overtook on the way down to Adenau - before gearing up again for the thrills and spills of Wipperman, Brunnchen and Pflanzgarten.

It all added up but nobody wanted it - shame!

There was even a golden period when you could hire Roadster Lights from nearby airports for just 80 euros for the weekend, probably ended by the efforts of yours truly and friends who may have - cough - scraped the odd panel 'in a car park' over the rental period having been proven unable to cope with a mighty 80hp Smart. The laughter of those present and scars on my credit card balance have just about faded; the fond memories remain.

With the brief hope that the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2006 between Smart and 'Project Kimber' would lead to the car's rebirth coming to nowt it'll be left to fans to bemoan the Roadster's passing through our rose tints. Or, just possibly, venture into the classifieds and ponder what if.

The rest of you will probably want to tell me I'm wrong. And that gearbox was indeed the final nail in the coffin.

SMART ROADSTER/ROADSTER COUPE
Engine: 698cc 3-cyl turbocharged
Transmission: 6-speed sequential (automated), rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 82@5,250rpm (Brabus 101@5,600rpm)
Torque (lb ft): 81@2,250-4,500rpm (Brabus 96@2,500-5,000rpm)
0-62mph: 10.9/11.2sec (Brabus 9.8sec)
Top speed: 113mph (Brabus 122mph)
Weight: 790kg/815kg (Brabus 820kg/840kg)*
MPG: c. 52mpg (Brabus 54.3mpg) NEDC combined
CO2: 121g/km (Brabus 122g/km)
Price new: £11,995 (Roadster Light) to £16,995 (Roadster Coupe Brabus) to £17,295 (RCR)

*All quoted weights minus driver

[Sources: Autocar]

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