Smart Roadster 80 hp - any good?

[pompei]

There is a tidy coupe for sale not far from me.  The thought of MASSIVE MPG is appealing although I'm not sure whether the diminutive size compared to the 9-5 will be. I am tempted though, but ...

 

Can you realistically do 100+ miles a day in them?

 

Is the semi auto trans as bad as some reviews make out?

 

Anything horrible to watch out for?

 

Can you do Brabus style upgrades to tweak a bit more power?

 

Ta

[purplebargeken]

Is the semi auto trans as bad as some reviews make out?

 

It was in my Smart car. It imploded and caused lots of hassle with the so called expert dealership being very dim. Others may not be so shit.

[xtriple]

I don't know much about them to be honest, but I do like them....  I hear they suffer from water leaks quite badly.... the gearbox takes some getting used to.... the posh, sporty (Brabus?) wheels are made of chocolate and bend the second you look at them funny...

 

But, I still fancy one. One went up the road the other day and it sounded lovely.

[dollywobbler]

Water leaks, shit gearboxes, French electrics. What's not to love? They do look fabulous and make a great noise, but electrickery woes put even me off.

[Keymaster]

I had a smart for a while

 

Gearboxes are ok once you learn how to drive around them but the hesitance between flooring the pedal and the car actually moving can be genuinely frightening at busy junctions and roundabouts.

 

Roadsters can suffer electrical gremlins as the loom lives in a water trap.

 

The engines all like to drink oil and turbos are often fubar by 40k miles.

 

Plenty of remapping options available & they can make a massive difference to performance.

 

I enjoyed owing mine, but it was a massive compromise to live with & probably wouldn't have another

[skattrd]

Be sensible buy a Japanese kei, much* less troublesome.

[messerschmitt owner]

I've a smart roadster and have done 100+ mile commutes in it.

 

Expect 43+mpg even with the hardest of driving. The roadster engines survive much better than the fortwo engines due to being revved to within an inch of their lives by their owners. The engine thrives on use, loves it ... toddle down the street at 30+ and it'll hate it. So drive it like you stole it.

 

Some do leak - badly and a new SAM (fuse box) is expensive ...

 

Remap - mine runs 120bhp  - but eats clutches every 40k. But 0-60 in 8.1 seconds and 124mph out of 700cc isn't bad.

 

brabus wheels are shite - end of discussion!

 

parts are cheap and a smart roadster is capable of being owner maintained. They do need maintained though  as the build quality is shocking.

 

Handles superbly and once you get used to the gearbox and are prepared to use it (not let the auto mode do it for you) it rewards you with a drive that is simply superb. You cannot have more fun at legal speeds, end of ...

[RoadworkUK]

Absolutely brilliant things, and I can't imagine anybody ever building anything quite like it ever again.

[Rocket88]

Water leaks are hilarious. I had a yellow one, which leaked THROUGH the door mirrors. Lashings of bathroom sealant fixed it.....Apart from that, and the rather undignified getting in and out  procedure, they are fun, all warnings/ comments above duly noted..............

[Vince70]

I had a smart roadster for about 3 years which I bought at a year old with a couple of 1000 on the clock and loved the thing but you will hear horror story's about water leaks and clutch issues and wet Sam units broken coil springs and dodgy steering racks.

 

Mine had a new steering rack and steering wheel under warranty but to be honest I don't think it needed it as I'm sure it was only a loose locknut but as I wasn't paying it didn't bother me.

Also the heater packed up and it was only the coat hanger wire for the mechanism would pop off but after taking it back to Mercedes about 6 times I repaired it myself within 5 minutes by just crimping up the wire and it was perfect afterwards but being under manufacturers warranty I wasn't meant to touch it.

 

Most of the leaking issues and Sam issues are caused by the area under the front scuttle area apparently and can be sorted with stripping the area out and using some of that Thompson roof seal stuff so I'm told.

 

Mine never had a single leak issue though and was 100% reliable but it was a bit of a garage queen and only came out the odd weekend and sunny day but I did get the upgraded seals and wing mirrors fitted on mine just to on the be safe side plus I also had the upgraded software done for the clutch issues.

 

The interior is a nice place to sit but the plastics are terrible quality and it does have a feel of tic tac boxes about it also DONT go anywhere near a Mercedes dealer unless you need your car to go on a star machine as mine normally came back worse than it went in.

 

Also there's no sump plug so buy yourself a pela pump for your oil changes plus to do a set of plugs you will have to take the back of the car off so keep some spare clips knocking about.

 

But saying all that the cars are great fun and it's more a case of no one understanding the car rather than real issues I think that got it a bad name plus rather than testing it for another year and sorting out all the problems before production most people ended up with a prototype car that had to be sorted as time went on.

 

I did hear that the reason though that Merc did pull the plug was it cost on average £3500 per car on warranty claims but I think it was the main dealer networks just throwing parts at cars and generally not having an understanding of them..

It's such a shame that it was never fitted with a decent manual box really but the suprex engines do last longer than the units fitted to the fortwo I think because it has an oil cooler but What it needed was something small N/A and Jap under the rear deck and the car would of been fantastic.

 

But the little 3 pot makes a nice warble and when the turbo kicks in makes a lovely little chirp.

 

The only reason I wouldn't buy another is that I know that I couldn't buy another as nice and in as good condition as the one I had and would always be comparing it to my jack black 80.

 

If your buying one make sure you live near a garage that does super unleaded as the cars are meant to be driven on high octane juice but saying that I don't know how it copes for sale in country's where it's not available.

 

Also get signed up to the roadsternet and make yourself up a set of mad Dans widgets and with any luck you may just have a leak free trouble freeish car.

 

And when buying spares it's worth checking eBay Germany as I bought the optional extra turbo and temp pods for mine from a Merc dealer in Germany and it cost me £56 cash on delivery and my local Merc dealer wanted £250 for the same part then told me it would cost £1000s to fix as it needed a new loom when all it needed was a £12 lead and 10 minutes to fix up... But I think the coupe got them as standard fitment anyway.

[Bear]

Only driven one of each Smart and Roadster, but the snap judgement there was that the Roadster's gearbox was MUCH better than the ForTwo Convertible. Really enjoyed the Roadster, it's on the bucket list as a 21st century X1/9 substitute. Know one person who owned one and it was textbook faulty, leaks, dead ECU, etc. but it also got into an accident on a roundabout and most of the issues seemed to come after that incident.

[cort16]

There's one that keeps coming up on gumtree locally for 1100 quid. It's very tempting.

[Aston Martin]

I think we've all thought about buying them, but I don't think I would.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Did you end up buying one? Have been eyeing up one myself, but getting shit scared by the horror stories...