Smart FORFOUR 1.3
Trendy By Nature. Jonathan Crouch Checks Out Smarts Forfour in 1.3-litre Petrol Guise
The best thing you can say about smarts forfour is that it makes every other Family Hatchback youve ever seen feel staid and boring. And if that was all this car had to recommend it, then for many, it would be enough.
Fortunately, the forfours talents go a bit deeper than the trendy bodywork but dont lets leave that too soon. This car has a presence, a pizzazz, that makes it as home in the golf club car park as outside McDonalds. And it makes you feel good when you get out of bed and look down the driveway at it in the morning. Just how many sub £12,000 cars can you say that about? It even made me reach into my pocket to pay a 20 upgrade when recently checking into Hertz at Nice Airport to pick up a budget runabout.
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A glance at the car park and I found myself saying yes before Id even properly thought about it. This car has that kind of effect on you. The car I tried was a 1.3-litre petrol model, a powerplant which accounts for a significant part of forfour sales across Europe.
Refinement is certainly not this engines strongest suit as I discovered when I ventured out onto the late night autoroute. Still, on twisting B roads, the sound can be quite a pleasing accompaniment to the fun served up by the slick gearbox and the agile handling. Inside, its not the best quality cabin in the sector but, as with the exterior, its by far the most pleasing. The seats are unexpectedly superb and the wheel and gearstick feel good to hold and fall to hand easily.
Theres a quality stereo and two focused dials with warning lights grouped around them. No groundbreaking ideas or particularly high quality materials but its all beautifully thought out and pleasing to the eye. On the road, its rather strange to be driving a
smart and find that youre changing gears yourself. This, after all, is the first manual gearbox model that the company has produced.
For those customers graduating up from the smart fortwo citycars who just cant cope with swopping cogs themselves, theres a softtouch smart-like automatic gearbox offered as an option. Prices for the forfour start at £7,295 for the 60bhp 1.1-litre versions, but the 95bhp 1.3-litre petrol model retails at £11,370 in passion trim, the sole derivative now on offer.
Apart from a 75bhp 1.1-litre petrol unit, your other engine options are both 1.5-litre in size either petrol or diesel.
"It makes you feel good just looking at it and how many other sub-£12,000 cars can you say that about?"
Whereas previous smart models were produced fully in-house at parent company MCCs Smartville plant in France, the forfour sees the company broaden its horizons significantly. The Forfour project is a partnership with
Mitsubishi and is built in Holland. Mitsubishi markets a far more conventional looking version as their new Colt but the Forfour has, as Ive said, smart personality stamped all over it. Sharing 60 per cent of its structure with the Colt, the forfour nevertheless looks very different.
The foursquare stance, the bulging wheelarches, beady front lamps and neatly stacked tail light clusters are all familiar design cues but closer inspection reveals a far more conventional car than the smarts were used to. Much of the personality that makes up a smart car as we know it has been in effect grafted onto the far more prosaic Colt. Put the two side by side and youd spot the same basic proportions but otherwise, the designers have done well with the styling. The exposed frame is painted silver and there are the usual plastic exterior panels.
The interior features four seats and plenty of headroom with a sliding rear bench fitted as standard so that you can choose between optimising passenger legroom or luggage space. The bench slides up to 150mm fore and aft and tilts backwards, folds in half or tumbles out of the way. smart even offer what they dub a lounge concept, an option where the front seats fold and allow you to stretch out in the back. A three person bench is also offered but by far the best setup is as a four seater with adequate shoulder space.
The dashboard isnt what youd expect, offering a far more conventional basic layout with a centre console, but MCC have livened it up with some jolly colours and auxiliary instrument binnacles so that existing smart owners will find it acceptable. Six airbags, anti lock brakes and electronic stability control are offered and MCC designed the car confident of a strong four-star Euro-NCAP crash test showing. As well as being smarts biggest and most practical car, the forfour is also their most enjoyable to drive. True, the steering still has that rather strange reluctance to self centre when accelerating out of a bend, but theres not that heat-in-mouth feeling of understeer the tiny fortwo coupes suffer from and overall levels of grip are very good.
Sports suspension is offered as an option and although it doesnt do ride quality too many favours, the ten per cent stiffer springs, 15mm lower ride height and big alloy wheels give a reassuringly planted feel on the road thats been singularly missing from previous smart offerings. Yes, it even feels vaguely sporty. All round vision is somewhat impaired by massively chunky windscreen pillars and youll still feel perched rather high in the drivers
seat. The brakes are effective although the pedal action is surprisingly sharp.
Look closely and youll find that what looks like a typical smart TRIDION safety cell is in fact a series of conventional painted panels with plastic cladding fleshing out the look. The panel fit on early models wasnt that great (particularly around the doors) but smart say this has since been tightened up. There will be those who see the plastic cladding as a superficial styling extravagance. Others will feel that this car represents a great balance between funky urban style and all-round practicality.
Were in the latter camp, preferring this car over its Mitsubishi cousin any day of the week. Which just about sums things up. I was a little disappointed by the engine noise but in every other respect, this forfour won me over. As a compact family hatch of character, its one of a kind.
FACTS AT A GLANCE
CAR: Smart Forfour Passion 1.3
PRICES: £11,370 on the road
INSURANCE GROUP: 6
PERFORMANCE: 0-60mph 10.5s / Max Speed 112mph
FUEL CONSUMPTION: (urban) 38.1mpg / (extra urban) 58.8mpg / (combined) 48.7mpg
STANDARD SAFETY FEATURES: Twin front airbags, ABS
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: Length/Width/Heightmm 3752/1684/1450mm
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