Smart #1 and Smart #3 First Drive Review: #ForgetWhatYouKnowAboutSmart
Products of a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz and Geely Automotive, these hashtag-named EVs are nothing like their tiny predecessors.
Henry Ford II once grumbled that making small cars meant small profits. Mercedes-Benz would have loved the Deuce to have been right about that. Its Smart small car brand proved nothing but a bottomless money pit from the moment the first tiny two-seater hit the road in 1998. By 2013, according to one analysis, Mercedes had spent about $5 billion on Smart, losing about $6,100 on every car it had sold in the previous 15 years.
In that context, the decision by Mercedes-Benz to turn Smart into a 50-50 joint venture business with China’s Geely Automotive looks, er … smart. Announced in 2019, Smart Automobile Co., Ltd is now headquartered in Ningbo, China, where it benefits from low costs, fast development times, and access to advanced EV hardware and software. More important, Smart no longer builds cars sized to squeeze into miniscule parking spaces in the back streets of Rome or Paris.
#TotalRethink
The tape measure tells the story. The original Smart Fourtwo would, from nose to tail, fit entirely within the entry-level Smart #1’s 108.3-inch wheelbase with 8.3 inches to spare. And with an overall length of 173.2 inches, width of 72.6 inches, and height of 61.3 inches, the larger Smart #3 is the about the size of a Jeep Compass, with a 109.6-inch wheelbase that’s almost 6 inches longer. Those names? They’re pronounced “Hashtag One” and "Hashtag Three."
Both Smarts are built on Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), described by the company as the world’s first open-source electric vehicle architecture. SEA also underpins the Volvo EX30, and Geely says it will eventually be deployed across nine global brands that between them sold more than 9 million vehicles worldwide in 2019. Unlike their unprofitable predecessors, the Smart #1 and #3 are underpinned by hardware—and software—with real economies of scale.
The Smart #1 is a tall hatchback with a funky roofline that adds character and allows for a range of two-tone paint schemes. Inside is an interior dominated by a smooth dash that swoops seamlessly into a high center console. Beautifully executed and detailed, with a faintly retro space-age vibe, it gives the Smart #1’s cabin, which Smart says has the interior room of a Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan (helped by a rear seat the slides fore and aft) and an upscale, uniquely modernist feel.
There are screens, of course: a letterbox-format 9.2-inch HD instrument cluster in front of the driver and a 12.8-inch infotainment touchscreen at the center of the dash. But unlike in many other minimalist EVs, they don’t overwhelm the interior.
The Smart #3 interior has the same architecture, though there’s slightly more legroom in the rear seat and more cargo space under the rear hatch. As in the #1, the quality of the materials used and the fit and finish throughout is very good. It’s an interior that makes that of the Volkswagen ID4 look cheap and gloomy.
The visual differences between the #1 and the #3 are all outside. The #3 has a swooping coupelike roofline that, while elegant, makes it look like a more conventional car. It’s proportionally less pugnacious, too, and not just because it has a 1.3-inch-longer wheelbase than the Smart #1. It’s 4.0 inches longer overall and three-quarters of an inch wider, and the roof is 3.2 inches lower. Despite the extra sheetmetal, the 4,210-pound Smart #3 weighs just 22 pounds more than the smaller #1.
Both Smart models are available in a variety of trim levels with battery packs starting at 49 kWh for the entry-level Smart #1 Pro and 51 kWh for the base Smart #3. All other trim levels come with a 66-kWh battery. Regardless of capacity, the batteries can be taken from a 10 percent state of charge to 80 percent in 30 minutes on a 150-kW charger.
All but the top-of-the-range Brabus models are powered by a single motor mounted at the rear axle and driving the rear wheels; that motor develops 268 hp and 253 lb-ft of torque. The Brabus versions are dual-motor, all-wheel-drive Smarts that pack 422 hp and 430 lb-ft, more than five times the power and three-and-a-half times the torque of the last Smart sold in the U.S., the electric-powered Smart Fourtwo ED (that’s, ahem, Electric Drive).
Smart says the entry-level #1 with the 49-kWh battery has a WLTP-certified range of 193 miles, and the best-optioned rear-drive model with the 66-kWh battery can travel 273 miles. The Brabus version is good for 248 miles, Smart says. (In America, gauged against the EPA test criteria, those figures would shrink.)
Sleeker sheetmetal, which gives the #3 a claimed drag coefficient of 0.27 compared with the #1’s 0.29, helps the bigger Smart travel farther. The base car with the 51-kWh battery has a WLTP-certified range of 202 miles, while the best of the single-motor, rear-drive variants with the 66-kWh battery is rated at 283 miles. The range of the #3 Brabus is 258 miles.
The single-motor Smart #1 will accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 6.7 seconds on its way to an electronically limited top seed of 112 mph. The single-motor Smart #3 is almost a second quicker to 60 mph, stopping the clock in less than 5.8 seconds. The dual-motor Brabus versions are almost supercar quick. The #1 Brabus nails 60 mph in under 3.9 seconds. The #3 Brabus takes two-tenths of a second less, making it quicker to 60 than Porsche 911 Carerra T.
In case you’re wondering, Brabus, which was founded in 1977 as a Mercedes-Benz tuning shop and remains an independent company, formed a joint venture with Mercedes in 2001 to build faster versions of the original Smart. It’s less hands on these days—the new Brabus Smarts are built entirely in China—but the association remains, and the Brabus branding is now being applied to higher-performance Smart models in much the same way Mercedes-Benz uses AMG.
So About Those Brabus Models ...
We spent time behind the wheel of the Brabus-badged versions of both the #1 and #3 Smarts and can confirm these ain’t your mom’s Smart cars. Of the two, the #3 Brabus is the better resolved when driven hard in full-fat Brabus mode, the most aggressive of the four drive modes. The #1 Brabus always feels as if it’s slightly overwhelmed by all that power and torque, like it’s ready to light up all four tires under hard acceleration, a sensation that’s arguably right on brand for Brabus, which in 1996 sold a Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan that could do 206 mph courtesy of a 582-hp 7.3-liter Mercedes V-12 stuffed under the hood.
Both the Brabus Smarts could use more carefully tuned spring and shock rates to give a slightly more compliant ride, and both could use more steering feel. But the longer wheelbase, wider track, and lower ride height of the #3 Brabus mean it feels the more composed of the two on indifferent roads. The #1 Brabus rolls on 19-inch wheels and low-profile tires; the #3 Brabus comes standard with 20s and 245/40 rubber and still feels the more comfortable car.
Enthusiastic drivers will be annoyed by the fiddly drive mode selection protocol, which involves cycling through the menu by way of a touch button under the central screen. They also lack steering wheel paddles to enable quick changes to the levels of lift-off regeneration. Worse, only two levels of regen are offered (low and high) when the cars should have a full coast setting that allows easy freeway running as well as a setting that allows for proper one-pedal driving in stop-start city traffic.
In Europe and China, the Smart #1 and #3 compete with compact EVs such as Volkswagen’s ID3, the Jeep Avenger EV, and, of course, their closely related Geely stablemate, the Volvo EX30. For context, the fully equipped #3 Brabus model retails in the U.K. for the same price as the top-of-the-range Volvo EX30 Twin Motor Performance Ultra, which is listed in the U.S. at $47,895. U.K. pricing suggests the entry-level Smart #1 Pro would cost $33,670 if it were sold in the U.S., just $4,500 more than a fully loaded Smart Fourtwo ED cost in 2019. Smart insists there are currently no plans to bring either model to America, however.
Ironically, both the Smart #1 and Smart #3 will likely spend most of their lives navigating the urban jungle like their pint-sized predecessors. But these Chinese-built Smarts represent a radical rethink for the city car brand. They are Smarts freed from a dogged adherence to a vehicle concept that, as the dismal sales numbers for the original two-seater clearly demonstrated, attracted few big-tent customers.
There’s still a sense of fun in the design and execution of the #1 and #3 that’s uniquely Smart. But with more room, more range, and more performance, these new Smarts—and the other models in the pipeline, including the #5, a boxy baby SUV—look poised to share that unique sense of fun with many more customers. And they might even make a small profit.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by cars. My father was a mechanic, and some of my earliest memories are of handing him wrenches as he worked to turn a succession of down-at-heel secondhand cars into reliable family transportation. Later, when I was about 12, I’d be allowed to back the Valiant station wagon out onto the street and drive it around to the front of the house to wash it. We had the cleanest Valiant in the world.
I got my driver’s license exactly three months after my 16th birthday in a Series II Land Rover, ex-Australian Army with no synchro on first or second and about a million miles on the clock. “Pass your test in that,” said Dad, “and you’ll be able to drive anything.” He was right. Nearly four decades later I’ve driven everything from a Bugatti Veyron to a Volvo 18-wheeler, on roads and tracks all over the world. Very few people get the opportunity to parlay their passion into a career. I’m one of those fortunate few.
I started editing my local car club magazine, partly because no-one else would do it, and partly because I’d sold my rally car to get the deposit for my first house, and wanted to stay involved in the sport. Then one day someone handed me a free local sports paper and said they might want car stuff in it. I rang the editor and to my surprise she said yes. There was no pay, but I did get press passes, which meant I got into the races for free. And meet real automotive journalists in the pressroom. And watch and learn.
It’s been a helluva ride ever since. I’ve written about everything from Formula 1 to Sprint Car racing; from new cars and trucks to wild street machines and multi-million dollar classics; from global industry trends to secondhand car dealers. I’ve done automotive TV shows and radio shows, and helped create automotive websites, iMags and mobile apps. I’ve been the editor-in-chief of leading automotive media brands in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The longer I’m in this business the more astonished I am these fiendishly complicated devices we call automobiles get made at all, and how accomplished they have become at doing what they’re designed to do. I believe all new cars should be great, and I’m disappointed when they’re not. Over the years I’ve come to realize cars are the result of a complex interaction of people, politics and process, which is why they’re all different. And why they continue to fascinate me.Read More