graeme73s
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
- Messages
- 328
- Car
- 560SEC, Smart Brabus cabriolet 03, Smart Brabus Cabriolet 08, Porsche 993 C2S Tip
How is that a manufacturer can make many improvements to their latest incarnation of the Smart Car yet screw up on not retaining the better bits from the earlier design.
Overall the new Brabus is a much better drive over the old. In truth if I had to use the new car daily I could live with it and I'm not sure that I can say that about the old design. The engine has a lot more mid range grunt than the old as it should being 300cc bigger. The gearbox is now a 5 speed over the previous 6 speed but still retains its leisurely change. That said for example if driving up a hill in the old it would falter think about dropping two gears and eventually sort itself out. The same as trying to accelerate off a roundabout, the old would fallter mid corner and change down. The new car thankfully does not do this. The gearbox remains composed even going up hill and will quite happily barrel you off a roundabout without changing gear mid corner. I know this can all be overidden by using the paddle shift, but for those like my mrs that only drives it in auto mode it used to be a pain. If you do use the paddle shift it blips the throttle for you on the down change which is quite amusing.
Much improved is take off from standstill. In the old car attempting to filter onto a roundabout or pull out from standstill was a guessing game between nailing the accelerator and what seemed like an endless delay before it connected to the engine. Thankfully this has also been sorted. You also now get a removable bonnet that makes life a lot easier to get to the ancillaries, in particular the washer bottle. Another big plus is the use of a glass rear window in the cab hood as with plastic in no time at all you cannot see through it
The down sides, forgive me if I sound a little picky it is not meant to be that way. Door pockets are half the size of the old. The lockable oddments tray under the drivers seat has gone and you can't fit the cd auto changer under the passenger side either. The cubby holes in the dash are bigger and you can now speck a lockable glove box lid. The boot is bigger but the flap that retains the stuff in the boot from falling behind the seats is now velcrowed to the rear carpet which is useless as you can imagine. Every time I drive the car and need to move the seat back, I have to remove the stuff that has fallen out of the boot and wedged behind the seat. What was wrong with the three rod design rear plastic cover. Not the best in the world but at least it did the job of keeping the stuff in the boot out of the passenger compartment.
When you start the car it always defaults to manual gearbox mode instead of auto. The old would always default to auto. The fan speed control even on its lowest setting is too loud and obtrusive in the new car. The car now rides on 17" Brabus allows with very low profile tyres against 16" and a bit more side wall. It was easy to bend the 16"s so I hate to think how many 17"'s we might get through on our pot holed roads. Finally stability. Yep the old car would get blown around a bit on the motorway. The new car is dreadful. At 80mph (all done on an autobahn of course) you start to get a lot of wind noise off the leading edge of the convertible hood. I don't know why as they look the same to me. The big down side is that the rear end feels planted but the front end feels like some huge hand is shacking the front end from side to side. So if you want to march on a bit you need both hands on the new chubby thick wheel.
Thanks for reading and very best to you all, Graeme
Overall the new Brabus is a much better drive over the old. In truth if I had to use the new car daily I could live with it and I'm not sure that I can say that about the old design. The engine has a lot more mid range grunt than the old as it should being 300cc bigger. The gearbox is now a 5 speed over the previous 6 speed but still retains its leisurely change. That said for example if driving up a hill in the old it would falter think about dropping two gears and eventually sort itself out. The same as trying to accelerate off a roundabout, the old would fallter mid corner and change down. The new car thankfully does not do this. The gearbox remains composed even going up hill and will quite happily barrel you off a roundabout without changing gear mid corner. I know this can all be overidden by using the paddle shift, but for those like my mrs that only drives it in auto mode it used to be a pain. If you do use the paddle shift it blips the throttle for you on the down change which is quite amusing.
Much improved is take off from standstill. In the old car attempting to filter onto a roundabout or pull out from standstill was a guessing game between nailing the accelerator and what seemed like an endless delay before it connected to the engine. Thankfully this has also been sorted. You also now get a removable bonnet that makes life a lot easier to get to the ancillaries, in particular the washer bottle. Another big plus is the use of a glass rear window in the cab hood as with plastic in no time at all you cannot see through it
The down sides, forgive me if I sound a little picky it is not meant to be that way. Door pockets are half the size of the old. The lockable oddments tray under the drivers seat has gone and you can't fit the cd auto changer under the passenger side either. The cubby holes in the dash are bigger and you can now speck a lockable glove box lid. The boot is bigger but the flap that retains the stuff in the boot from falling behind the seats is now velcrowed to the rear carpet which is useless as you can imagine. Every time I drive the car and need to move the seat back, I have to remove the stuff that has fallen out of the boot and wedged behind the seat. What was wrong with the three rod design rear plastic cover. Not the best in the world but at least it did the job of keeping the stuff in the boot out of the passenger compartment.
When you start the car it always defaults to manual gearbox mode instead of auto. The old would always default to auto. The fan speed control even on its lowest setting is too loud and obtrusive in the new car. The car now rides on 17" Brabus allows with very low profile tyres against 16" and a bit more side wall. It was easy to bend the 16"s so I hate to think how many 17"'s we might get through on our pot holed roads. Finally stability. Yep the old car would get blown around a bit on the motorway. The new car is dreadful. At 80mph (all done on an autobahn of course) you start to get a lot of wind noise off the leading edge of the convertible hood. I don't know why as they look the same to me. The big down side is that the rear end feels planted but the front end feels like some huge hand is shacking the front end from side to side. So if you want to march on a bit you need both hands on the new chubby thick wheel.
Thanks for reading and very best to you all, Graeme
