Due to my daily commute rocketing up, looks like I will be selling the S for something cheaper

Quite like the look of the Smart ForFour. Funky interior, pop out roof. Brabus looks quite quick, diesel looks quite frugal.

Anyone have any thoughts on this as a car to do a 120 mile daily commute?

Cheers

 

Crap, had one as a hire car.
Awful gearbox, poor engine and bad ride.

 

isnt it a rebadged colt or something?

 

Yep. Smart were suggesting that's a good thing

 

Surely a diesel beater?

And you could keep the S

 

'Lifestyle' version of a Mitsu Colt, painted up to look like metal & plastic.

Consequently, it bombed & was dropped.

The Mitsu was cheaper, but I dunno about residuals; I'd have though you can't give the Smarts away.

 

The Colts are very cheap 2nd hand, and quite good by all accounts.

 

Had a few of these as courtesey cars - very unimpressed.

Overpriced, dull to drive, crap gearchange, funny driving position. Didn't even come with a/c as standard.

 

My mother had one as a courtesy car, 1.5 diesel. which I tried.

TBH I quite liked it - handled well, funkyish interior, felt roomy, good punchy engine.

Downsides were the lack of space in the boot, and rear seats that didn't fold flat properly.

Oh... and the gearbox.. truly abysmal.

OK out of town when you could use the stick to manually shift, but not practical to manually shift in town so you are forced to revert to the auto setting which is so slow it's comical.

You could stop the car, jump out, and change to bigger or smaller wheels to change the gearing quicker than the box can do it

 

We test drove the Colt when Kate was looking to downsize. Really nothing special at all.
As has been said, the Smart is a 'lifestyle' version of that, with the attendant price hike.

If you want super small, the best we found was a Jazz.

For a 120 mile commute though, personally I'd go a bit bigger.