T255 JUG & It Looked Like A Little Jug Too!

Tucked away amongst the motorbikes this 1999 Pure was just asking to be mine. The usual trip to the bike store provided even greater interest this Saturday afternoon as I was given the opportunity to test ride it. The dealer did not really know the Smarts full potential, even unsure to its model.  A deal was struck and unusually I with great assistance from husband, Kevin came away with four wheels instead of two.

Once home it was stripped clean, yellow body panels with a black tridion shell made it stand out well.  However it had had a very hard life. 66,000miles on the clock following a quick mathematical conversion made me realise that this little one needed careful handling.  The panels were a little tired and scuffed – but with some cleaning and polishing came up well.  The tridion shell did not far so well after years of servicing Purston Car Centre it bore the imprint of advertising stickers. The back window also bore the signs of the Smarts early history. Prior to being imported into Britain by the owners of Purston Car Centre, the Smart had started life owned and registered by a Mr Wang in Germany who had used the little one as a taxi!  The imprint of his advertising is still evident when the sun shines a certain way after a polish. [pay]

All of this adds to the little cars character a full service history – with the original documentation.

The blue interior was also a little shabby, but again with some tender loving care it has come up well. A blue neon light added under the dash originally some aluminium floor plates but these had to be changed to blue as I was being dazzled in the sun!

A trip to Smarts-R-Us and a purchase of some 2nd hand passion wheels (with tyres) gave the little one a new image and gave me a spare (and Kevin, peace of mind) the rear wheel hubs were painted yellow and I have yet to paint the brake callipers to match.  Kevin made me a matching blue and yellow vinyl wheel cover so the spare does not look out of place behind the seat. With a promise to cover the seats with blue leather.

The exterior panels have seen quite a change, in honouring my biking days and young hero Valentino Rossi I decided to cover up some of the panel damage by treating the little one to some Rossi style graphics & renaming him “The Doctor” All thanks to Jamie & Sonia at Motografix Bikes in Doncaster In addition to this is a mini Rossi helmet which sits inside the car and which can be viewed through the windscreen.

Then something from my motorbike was also handed to “The Doctor” and that was my private registration plate R4 CYJ.  This too had been on a Rossi Rep – a Honda 600cc Hornet although on selling it last year and settling for my old KR1S had put my plate on retention.

The Doctor has had a rev counter & clock fitted as these were not present on original Pure model Smarts. These needed connecting, Kevin connected the clock but a trip to Smart of Leeds was required to connect the rev counter. They were wonderful, only charged me 30-minute labour charges even though they checked out my speeding flashing indicators at the same time. I’m considering a remap but to be honest I am very happy with its performance it cruises at 80mph (oops) Allows me to overtake easily on motorways and even confuses the Nova boys at traffic light starts!

The smart community has been a great help, like those from the biking community, they are more than eager to help and to sit and chat about the fun of Smarts. Graham from www.smartcar-owner.co.uk provided me with initial advice with regard to the rev counter and indicators, and provided me with links to Dave & the gang at www.funkysmart.co.uk who have provided me with advice (subscription to Smartimes via this site). and regular local meets in Sheffield. And the www.smartclub.co.uk were I have gained further insight into all that is Smart.

Although Kevin laughs at the Smart he enjoys driving it (when I let him) and has enjoyed the company we have met at meets. Only three months into ownership and I can extol the virtue of the smart to anyone, my neighbour even bought one after a test-drive in mine! [/pay]

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Smartville: A Smart Place

Nestled in between an orchard and a cornfield on 168 acres, near the French town of Hambach, is an extraordinary factory known as ‘Smartville’. The full name for this particular factory is ‘Smartville Energy Centre’ and it is a very energy efficient car factory.

The Smart car was designed with the environment in mind and you can only make an environmentally friendly car from an environmentally friendly factory. Smartville is as globe friendly as a car factory can get- it even includes a nature reserve with rare species of plants and landscaping for hundreds of trees.[pay]

Whilst building Smartville, all materials used in its construction were checked to see if they could potentially harm the environment. As a result, none of Smartville’s buildings contain poisonous CFCs or formaldehyde.

Rainwater that is collected from the roof is retained for use in tempering steel. All other wastewater that drains off the roads and car parks is also retained for specific purposes. Waste water from the factory’s industrial processes and sanitary installations is recycled and purified in the factory’s very own biological cleansing facility for use in the gardens and as a coolant during the production process.

Smartville lets no materials go to waste- any surplus material such as excess powder gets collected and reused. Energy saving is extremely important to Smartville and insulating the buildings helps to retain heat from production, so that they can conserve it and use it later.

Smartville uses no poisonous metals such as lead and cadmium, throughout the entire process of producing a Smart car. Chromium and mercury are also excluded from the development process.

The paints used on a Smart car are solvent free-, which is the first time that any motorcar has been produced this way. If no solvents are used then there is no hazardous waste left over. Smart is also the first car manufacturer in the world to use only powder paints for the steel body. This is ecologically friendly because it means no wastewater. This is recognised as the most environmentally friendly painting technique in the car industry, in addition to which it achieves energy savings of 40%. Any paint that has not been used is collected for reuse.

When a Smart car reaches the end of its life, it can be 95% recycled. It gets returned, dismantled and sorted for recycling. The panels used on Smart cars are made of recyclable plastic and not only that, but are virtually dent resistant and rust free.

Smartville has several sections to it and they are all connected by a conveyor belt. It takes roughly 4 and a half hours to complete and finish a Smart car. Smartville don’t actually manufacture all of the car parts, as they have parts delivered to them by partner companies. It is Smartville’s job to put everything together. This is why it only takes 4 and a half hours to build a Smart car. Finished Smarts are stored in the famous glass towers that can be seen at the factory.

Submitted By:

Anna Sampson[/pay]

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Living With A Roadster

I collected our (mine & Tracy’s My wife) roadster from smart Coventry on the 25/06/2003. The colour was picked after much deliberation as I wanted yellow and Tracy wanted red so as we couldn’t talk the other one round we went for the black.

Upon collection I made a couple of mods, which consisted of the fitment of a JVC single C.D player in conjunction with a facia adaptor, which I purchased off Smarts r us along with a set of carbon fibre style mirror covers and a couple of the roadster key rings.[pay]

I also fitted a set of the wheel centre caps and a pair of black velour carpet mats these were supplied by smart of Coventry (a big thanks must go out to Suzanne and Nigel at this point for all their help) along with a pair of matching black roadster baseball caps.

One thing that struck me upon collection of the car was the very high quality finish of the paintwork something that is sadly lacking these days!

The first night we had the car we managed to clock up over 60 miles showing the car off to family and friends I’m afraid. (Well we were very pleased and excited about our new toy.)

The fist weekend we had the car was the weekend of the smart owners club meeting at Billing Aquadrome, we attended on the Sunday as I was working on the Saturday we very made really welcome and people said a lot of nice things about the car thank you all.

During the night before the car was mistaken for a T.V.R! by a guy working in a McDonalds we went to, needless to say I wasn’t that upset.

The car is a real joy to drive even making the Monday morning drag to work a pleasure and fuel economy is superb.

The handling of the car is excellent, this was something I had been a bit worried about as my last car was a focus, which are renowned for being a drivers car, but the roadster has surpassed this and we are revelling in the drive that the car produces.

When I took delivery of the car I noticed that the rear lamps fitted were incorrect for usage in this country, upon further investigation I discovered that the wiring was correct so when I select reverse I get a red light and the rear fog illuminates white (I’ve painted the bulb as a stop gap and smart Coventry are awaiting the release of two pairs of lamps (their demo has the same fault), they had noticed the fault on the P.D.I and ordered the lenses. They have been informed that the lenses should be here in early august and will be rectified under warranty.

At the time of writing this the car is three weeks old and has over 880 miles on it (all great fun especially the cat & fiddle run last Sunday) Thanks to all who were there it was a great day out, if you get a chance to do this run do it the roads are fantastic.

The next planed run is the L2B although I am toying with the idea of the Blackpool Run.

SUMMARY 

The car is an absolute pleasure to own and drive, the two-piece roof is easy to use and nice and light, boot space is good up front and not as bad as Jeremy Clarkson said in the rear, the cabin is roomy although the passenger seat could do with a bit of under thigh support as long journeys cause leg ache! And getting in and out is an art form!

All I can really say is if your thinking about a roadster go ahead you won’t be disappointed.  Anyway bye for now see you at L2B.

Submitted By:

Matthew Beaumont[/pay]

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What A Smart Idea, Smart People Hire Smart Cars

Hireasmart was born in October 2001 the brainchild of Gail Martin, one smart lady. The company opened with the first six right‑hand drive passion models to arrive in the UK and it wasn’t long before more cars were required ‑ the fleet, like Topsy, just grew and grew. There is now new excitement within the Hireasmart offices at the thought of its growing family when the new smart roadster becomes available followed by the smart forfour in 2004.

From the word go Gail has worked closely with smart. Most smart centres throughout the UK are happy to pass on hire enquiries. There are occasions when customers take a test drive from a smart showroom, but then want to try the car for a week or weekend to make sure it meets their needs and lifestyle. That’s one area where Hireasmart comes in ‑ Passion coupe prices start from £38.50 per day, the weekend rate is £85.00. and weekly hire is from £23.00. per day ‑ Passion cabriolets start from £49.50 per day. Thereafter, if required, a smart voucher worth £85.00 is available for the customer towards their purchase ‑ what a way to help seal a deal.[pay]

Delivery and collection of cars is also available, quotation on application. Hireasmart will also "meet and greet" clients at any of the London Airports.

As all smart enthusiasts know, these little cars can be wrapped and logo’d. What fun to be able to change the colour of your car or have some sassy signature to personalise yours. Hireasmart can arrange all that. We have many corporate customers who require this service to enable them to promote their business, and more and more companies have cottoned on to this idea and are delighted with the interest and enquiries that follow.

Hireasmart has two offices ‑ one in Beaconsfield, Bucks ‑ 01494 680030 and one in the smart Service Centre, Brentford ‑ 0208 569 8516. Our web address: www.hireasmart.com for further information about the company.

 

Submitted By:

Brenda Shields[/pay]

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My Affair With A Topless Model

I bought LV51 YOY (Delilah - what else?) last autumn. After the sad demise of the previous love of my life, a yellow Pulse cabrio, it wasn’t long before I began to feel lonely so began to put out feelers for her replacement. I had been quoted ridiculously long delivery times for the spec I was after. What really annoyed me was that items like front fogs and speaker upgrade (both standard on the RHD model) would be extra on the LHD. Also, I wanted proper UK-spec front and rear lights this time so the cost began to mount. Nevertheless, I was all set to order a car when I happened to pass Smart East Anglia, a small (non-official) dealer in rural Framlingham, Suffolk. And there she was sitting demurely on the forecourt. It was love at first sight. Delilah was a near-new Passion and had all the extras I wanted including heated leather seats and electric mirrors. She didn’t have the paddle gearshift, which I rather fancied, but she did have side airbags. The price was extremely tempting so Delilah and I became an item.

Any regrets? Well, Delilah and I get on just fine but no relationship is perfect so if I had to name one, it would have to be, er, the position we adopt when we are close. Yes, I always seem to sit on the right. I am ashamed to say I cannot help compare Delilah with her predecessor. Having owned both LHD and RHD versions, I have to say I prefer LHD though I think some people exaggerate the differences. Yes, the seating position is a little higher but the Smart has so much headroom as standard it can afford to lose an inch or two. Other people (or maybe the same people!) have complained about the wiper pattern but, again, the difference is slight. No, what does annoy me is that the accelerator pedal on RHD Smarts is not floor-hinged. This would not be a problem if it wasn’t for the square electronic box of tricks it hangs from which, depending which shoes I wear, can catch my toe. I also miss the ease of parking LHD offered but apart from that, who cares? They are both smarts. One thing I have noticed is that one is more likely to get flashed/waved at by a LHD Smart driver! In the early pioneering days of LHD-only, pretty well all smarts in the UK were enthusiast-owned but obviously this has changed with the advent of RHD (present company excepted!)[pay]

So, what have I done to improve Delilah’s already attractive appearance? Well, nothing performance-wise (unless you count a smart club scoop and K&N air filter), most mods have been practical or aesthetic.

The first thing I had to do was to add a bit of sparkle to the interior. The grey plastic and seductive black leather may suit Delilah’s sophisticated up-market appearance but some would call her interior drab. Seriously drab. My previous cab also had grey interior plastic but at least it had blue seats. I re-sprayed the speedo, rev-counter and clock pods of that car yellow to match the panels. So, I decided Delilah’s pods needed a similar makeover but in silver. I wanted the pods to look like real metal though, not just silver paint (Delilah would find that just too degrading), so used Alclad lacquer. (I have a hobby of making model aircraft and this paint is used to obtain highly realistic bare-metal finishes of all types: aluminium, stainless steel, chrome, etc.) Sure enough, the result was just what I was after and, combined with a set of Michelak alloy heater and stalk knobs, Delilah seemed to appreciate her sparkly new jewellery.

Next was a set of tints. I had these on my first smart so again went to Autoshades of Sutton. £100 later (cabrios are cheap to tint as they have hardly any windows!) the car was transformed, Delilah now looked much more enigmatic and I loved the way her pods glinted seductively through her new shades. I would almost go as far as to say a Smart looks like something is missing without tints. Unlike some cars, where tints make them look like drug-dealers’ cars, I think darkened windows really suit the Smart as they clean up the styling and emphasize its attractive shape. Incidentally, I went for Autoshades’ ‘light smoke’, which is a 35% tint - any more is illegal and unnecessary in my opinion. With the 35% tint, the view out remains perfectly clear; also it is not glaringly obvious that the screen is un-tinted in comparison.

Some new shoes were next on the shopping list for Delilah. Yes, she was starting to exhibit expensive tastes but what the heck, she was worth it. My previous car had Sportivas which I still consider one of the nicest wheels for the car but I felt an all-silver smart of Delilah’s pedigree demanded a slightly ‘cleaner’-looking wheel, one where the front wheels did not particularly look narrower than the rears, so I went for Khans. Khan wheels will happily accept 195s all round but I opted to maintain the size difference recommended by Smart so run 175 front, 195 rear. Handling and looks are improved enormously and steering remains beautifully light. I hate brake dust on a nice set of wheels so set of the Smart Club’s Kevlar brake pads ensure Delilah’s shoes stay nice and shiny!

Being a RHD Passion cabrio, I already had the sound upgrade with tweeters and bass boxes as standard. These boxes really do improve things and should be standard on all Smarts (I may be right in thinking early cars had them?) but I still felt the sound was too much at the front of the car. So, I fitted a Kenwood single-CD head unit, and some rather nice Infinity 6×9s on a hard rear shelf (inexplicably discontinued by smart now) powered by a Sony amp under the passenger seat. I am not an ICE nut but for a relatively small outlay Delilah now sings beautifully. As I live very close to Top One in Kingston, I sometimes pop in on my way home from work to see if there is anything I can treat Delilah to, and recently noticed they had some Mk6 rear valences. Now, don’t get me wrong, Delilah’s rear end was perfectly lovely but, for £16, she now looks younger and even more beautiful.

And that’s about it, oh yes, apart from a wind net to keep Delilah’s hair in place. I conducted a test with the top down and side windows up. At 50 mph the difference is staggering; the turbulence around the back of the head and ears is reduced to almost none. At my age I cannot afford to lose any more hair!

What’s next? Well, a set of yellow panels may well be fitted by the time this is printed. Yellow is such a cheerful Smart colour and should never have been discontinued. And Delilah does keep asking me to treat her to some new clothes. Let’s just hope she does not suspect I may subconsciously be trying to make her look a little like her fun-loving predecessor!

Grahame Pearson

Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey[/pay]

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The Cat & Fiddle Run 26th January 2003

The day began at the Windmill Pub junction 19 of the M6 motorway, it was a day that was to start out wet and didn’t change much all day. Thankfully the weather conditions didn’t stop at least 17 Smart cars attending the event.

From the windmill Pub the group headed into Knutsford and with the help of the PMR radio communications we successfully emerged through the traffic in an unbroken line. The next point of call was the Tesco supermarket in Macclesfield to pick up a few more members then we where off following the road out of Macclesfield. At one point a Vauxhall decided this was his chance to overtake my dreaded Smart at the tail of the convoy but unfortunately he hadn’t banked on finding a long line of the little blighters in front of me. He was quick to fall back into line and submit to the fact that he would have to follow us as we wound our way up the road to the Cat and Fiddle. As we climbed steadily up the winding roads we where enveloped in a heavy mist and fog lights where brought into operation. My passenger managed to grab a few shots of the cars in front through the rain soaked windscreen.[pay]

On arrival at the pub we lined up for the photo shoot of the intrepid bunch but it was a brave set of photographers who stepped out into the wind and drizzle to capture the moment. Entering the pub it was a relief to find a warm log fire blazing in the hearth of the bar. After ordering our drink we where led through to the lounge which had been pre-booked exclusively for the Smart club members. Plenty of wheeling and dealing took place and various Smart parts and accessories circulated the room.

The menu offered a good selection of tradition pub grub and I finally settled for beef and stilton pie. I was most impressed by the excellent service and the food was of an equal standard washed down finally with a large mug of hot chocolate.

After further Smart discussion everyone went back out to brave the elements once more and Smarts-R-Us where on hand to offer their parts and services. I managed to grab a few more shots of the new arrivals sporting a wide variety of accessories. One Smart was fitted with a motorbike silencer in place of the standard exhaust, which was of particular interest to the crowd. The owner was disappointed to find that he was still behind in the exhaust sound off stakes and further modifications were under discussion.

After I had walked the lines to inspect the troops and discuss the modifications I decided that I would head for home. There was mention of a few more meetings in the planning stage and I look forward to attending the next event. It is clear from the excellent turn out in such extreme weather conditions that Smart owners are a committed crowd which is going from strength to strength as the popularity of the Smart increases.

Thanks to the Smart club members who organised the event.

 

Submitted By:

Simon Llewellyn[/pay]

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Smart For Pizzas

Adrian and I moved to Torbay from Wilshire two and a half years ago and bought two pizza takeaway businesses, one in Torquay and one in Paignton. Both were up and running as mainly “take away” with a few deliveries being made in the owner’s car or when busy they employed a driver with his own car.

We immediately decided the potential for the growth of the business was to increase the delivery trade and to that end we looked around for some cheap cars that we could use for delivering pizzas. Budget was tight and we ended up buying three white Nissan Micras. They were quite old (all L reg) but they looked good once we had them sign written and customers noticed them and they certainly brought in a lot of new trade.

After running them for over a year and ploughing money into them, (never a week seemed to go by without spending some serious money on new clutch, gear box, tyres, brakes etc. etc.). They seemed like a black hole; that we just had to keep pouring money into it just to keep them on the road. We decided it was time now that we had got the business going to take some time to have a serious look at the cost-effectiveness of having ageing cars – a decision had to be reached. MOT’s were looming for two of the Micras and we knew from experience that it was going to be costly.[pay]

We looked around for something that would be reasonable to insure, cheap to run and would not cost the earth. We looked at mopeds but we could not see us keeping our drivers if we made the change from cars to mopeds. We had made the decision when we had first bought the business that was not the way we wanted to go. Our aim was for quality and dripping wet drivers taking pizzas out of hot bags on the doorstep was not an image we wanted to portray!

I remembered that just before I had left Wiltshire a work colleague and his wife had bought a new Smart Car, she had brought it in to work to show us and it had made a huge impression on me. How could such a small car feel so big when you sat in it? The usual jokes had been made about it being like Dr Who’s Tardis – small on the outside – spacious interior!! It wasn’t cheap and tacky; the interior was classy. She loved it and I must say I remember thinking one day I would like one.

This got me thinking whether it would be a practical car for pizza delivery, so I went on the Internet and found out all about them.

Last July we went to Bristol and picked up our two brand new Black and Cream Pure Smarts. We loved them and set about getting them sign written. (We had inherited the name of Panda Pizza when we bought the business and although we had often thought of a name change we had built a good reputation and the name was well known locally, so we kept it). We changed our company signage to match the colours. When we started using the Smart cars to deliver Pizzas we got some great reactions from customers – love it or hate it (and most loved it) they always smiled!! My husband delivers and he is 6ft 4 inches – even he had plenty of legroom and a bit of headroom. We have in the past had big cars with less headroom!!

Our two Smart cars have traveled around 12000 miles each since last July and the only money spent on them has been fuel and replacement of two light bulbs. The money we now spend on fuel has almost halved and the saving has been tremendous. We often quip that the money we save on fuel is paying off one of the Smart cars!!

We now have the two Smarts and one Nissan Micra – we are planning on replacing the Micra for our third Smart later on this year and we can’t wait.[/pay]

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The Bluecabby

My wife Sandra first mentioned about the Smart; she liked the look of it, well I have always been into performance cars and just said, “yes” in the right places, you know what I mean? One summer’s day Sandra found a dealer selling Smarts talked me into going and there they all were! Sandra had the first drive and came back all smiles. I had a go, just to show willing, and was impressed with the build and the way the little thing performed.

We started to look for our first Smart. We found it locally in Bristol, a Bay Grey passion LHD with only 8 miles on the clock so we purchased it. During the trip home from picking the car up the engine went BANG! just 40 miles on the clock, a new one had to be fitted and all was OK until we had a problem with the back window. We booked the car in to have the problem fixed. Sandra and myself were sent into the showroom and there it was, BLUECABBY with paddle shift, leather heated seats, CD changer, speaker up-grade, air con, and a silver Tridion (it’s a Pulse).[pay]

A week later we took delivery of BLUECABBY and immediately knew we wanted bigger wheels and a few other mods. I managed to organise the wheels after many phone calls to South West Tyres in Clevedon. AGM copy 17” wheels with a fitting kit, the tyres are Silverstone FTZ sport 205/40/17 all round for £825. This was just the start - the car now has a Stainless Steel scoop brought at the Graydon meet, a remap by Smarts-r-us, K and N air filter, blue dials, meshed grilles and a dump valve.

We love this little car and intend to spend more on mods. I want a twin exit exhaust, one either side, and with so many available with very different qualities I am sitting on the fence until somebody says “this is the best” then I will get one. I am also thinking of tints, and some more alloy for the interior.

Submitted By:

Steve and Sandra of Swindon Wiltshire[/pay]

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I didn’t want a Smart

Unlike most people reading this I didn’t want a Smart. I thought they were weird, funky little cars but didn’t consider them to hold a candle to my motorbike. I mean look at it - you can’t take them seriously can you? Then I drove one. Okay, it wasn’t ‘quick’ but it was nippy, responsive and the engine feels un-burstable. Even in standard trim it’s faster 30-50mph than a BMW 323i - not a lot of people know that. That was two and a half years and 40 odd thousand kilometres ago now. I lived with it in standard trim just as a tool, something to use when it rained and I didn’t want to get the bike dirty. One day on the way home from work I caught site of Graham (I’m sorry I don’t know his surname) in his pre-B.I.G Performance days.

He had a set of sportivas and a loud exhaust on. I went as fast as I could go, Graham easily outstripping me round the twisties near where I lived. We stopped at the local bike meet spot (where else!) and we swapped cars for a spin - wow what a revelation! I went around the roundabout several times just to make sure - it felt amazing. It gripped and felt like a go-kart and transformed the car’s handling. The under steer on the standard 135 front tyres is laughable sometimes (but at the same time very forgiving). Eventually after a long interlude I got myself a set of second hand Sportivas (see below). 195 Uniroyal ‘Rain tyres’ on the back and 175 Continental Eco Contacts on the front (from the rears of the originals).[pay]

However by this point the bike was gone and I needed that little bit more to keep myself entertained. I went to a smart club meet, which I found out about accidentally one Sunday trawling the Internet. I came across the ‘meetings’ section on www.thsmartclub.co.uk. Again there was Graham (who to this day I have only met twice!) this time in B.I.G Performance mode. We had a chat for a good 30 seconds by which time he had flogged me a scoop (at £5 off retail price - cheers!). I was sceptical about the sort of benefit that this metal weave £45 piece of art-work (they look great) would give me. If you think about it you have to consider the amount of drag your hand gets if you stick it out of a car window at any sort of speed.

There is a hell of a lot of pressure when you do that so I thought that it must make some improvement in making the engine breathe more easily. I think its effect is marginal but certainly worth it. It makes it freer revving and seem faster. Not a lot but certainly noticeably quicker. If you hadn’t driven the car every day you might not notice any difference. But take an unbiased opinion - they do make a difference. Next on the agenda was an exhaust - but not before a set of musical horns. I know, I know but when you find a cheap set of musical horns (£30 opposed to £50 normally - thank you Grove Accessories, Ealing, West London) it has to be done! The tune is “Bo***x and the Same to You”. They are now on the driver’s side under the car in the belly pan - thank you to The Swedish Car Centre, Ealing, and West London for fitting them. The exhaust came in the summer of 2002 (once again fitted by the Swedish Car Centre). I was pondering between a Janspeed twin exit exhaust, a B.I.G performance exhaust and the Ragazzon exhaust supplied by thesmartclub.co.uk.

To cut a long story short I plumped for the ragazzon. I’d seen several Janspeeds exhausts - I didn’t want what everybody else had so that was out. I didn’t want to spend a fortune so I went for the ragazzon. The difference wasn’t immediately apparent when it was fitted. It took probably a thousand kilometres before it really settled in and started making a lovely noise (but not very loud thank goodness - I do a lot of motorway miles). It was perfect and just what I was looking for. Fruity but not boomy in the cabin. I’ve certainly had no problems with it and am very happy with the looks and noise.

The standard eco contacts are exactly that - economical with the contact with the road. Unless they were really hot they really weren’t up to much. A 175-section tyre is quite rare - apart from similar economy tyres. As a replacement I had fitted a 185/55/15 Toyo Proxes TR-1S. This is far superior - standard fitment on a BMW M5, 3rd overall in the Evo tyre test Nov. 02 - and was what I wanted. Unfortunately they don’t fit exactly right and I have heard of some tyre fitters not willing to fit them to Sportiva rims. They also catch on the wheel arches occasionally as there is only 3-4mm clearance on full lock (any suspension movement and they catch). Still, I was convinced they fit and the customer is always right! (I’ve done 2,000km now). Whilst on my trip to Smarts-R-Us I was told what they did to solve such a problem. You can actually pull the whole font panel forward by the part near the radiator and mount an extension to keep it in the forward position (just a cut up number plate). I’ve yet to do this, so more to follow.

My final major expense has been the re-map. This is a re-mapping of the fuel injection system to gain more power (I’m not going to go into any more technical details because that is about the limit of my understanding of it!). Car manufacturers build cars with quite high tolerances so that they will last a long time and are less likely to have any mechanical problems. However this over- engineering saps power. Enter Smarts-R-Us and a laptop computer. It is literally plugging in a computer and altering the ECU via that link.

I decided that I wanted more mid-range so that I could over-take a little bit more easily and keep up with faster cars at the ‘traffic light grand prix’. The biggest advantage was on the motorway - 6th gear and 85 mph are easy now. No more changing down into 5th every time there is a hill. For £299 it doesn’t sound like a lot of work but you do get a three-year guarantee and back up if there are any problems. My car being a MK3 is prone to the engine management warning light staying on after a re-map I was informed - and it did stay on. This is very worrying but Smarts-R-Us have told me this is perfectly fine and normal and if it does not go off after 15 hours of driving to give them a call and they will sort it out by coming to me (which I thought was an excellent offer because its quite a trek to them in Nottingham for me).

I have only had this done in the last week (at the time of writing this) and am still getting used to it - it takes a whole new approach to drive. At 3k rpm it’s all change and it’s actually got some oomph. So much so that hitting three thousand whilst exiting a tight roundabout (or turning onto a wet road) has the traction control losing it and the rear wheels spinning out of the bend. Would that be called a tail slide? Nah, can’t be - it’s a Smart . . . .

The standard stereo is fairly poor so I have also had fitted a fairly swanky Pioneer flip front single CD. It was cheaper than the Smart sound upgrade and kept the original speakers but the output is a lot better now. I’m not into ICE systems and that sort of thing but a replacement stereo really does make long journeys shorter. I can’t quite make my ears bleed with the new set-up but its great for what I want it to do.

I’ve also had Phillips +50% brightness bulbs fitted (the standard ones aren’t bad but these are better). They are about £12 each from any car accessories store or motorcycle accessories store - they are just standard H4 fitments. A warning though - they are a complete son of a bitch to fit. Somebody is having a laugh at smart somewhere. Lastly there’s the Sigma category 3 alarm/ immobiliser. The alarm/immobiliser was possibly a mistake because my insurance company informed me that this made absolutely no difference to my premium. I think it adds piece of mind for my benefit though.

Next on the list of things to do is: Fit clear indicator lenses, sort out wheel arches to make them fit the tyres, fit sports springs on the rear and fit a dump valve.

On the back burner: Fit MS Design Body-kit, drive to Sahara and back.

Submitted By:

Dan Lynch, Norwich[/pay]

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A Team of Highly Trained Creative Mercenaries

jgr22 are a team of highly trained creative mercenaries operating in the North West of England.

jgr22 approaches all its design briefs with the same youthful, fresh and fun loving enthusiasm. So it was decided that if we were going to purchase a company car to extend our corporate ideology out onto the streets, there was only one choice, the smart car.

Having a smart car in our corporate colours wasn’t going to make a loud enough statement we would be happy with. So we decided to treat the whole smart car as a canvas and get to work on designing a complete jgr22 vehicle livery.[pay]

So we could play about on screen with different design layouts, we needed to draw an outline version of the smart car on the computer. To do this, we scanned a side profile photograph of the car into Adobe Photoshop and then traced over the scan in Adobe Illustrator. This gave us a vector EPS file we could scale and colour to our heart’s content.

Now came the fun part. We now had a computer generated smart car we could play around with. The initial hour or so was spent colouring the smart in wacky psychedelic colours, trying out contrasting colour schemes and basically having a laugh. Cow/leopard/zebra skin patterns, bright acid pinks and yellows, airbrushed spectrums and chromes. You name it, we tried it.

After the novelty of designing the most garish and outlandish colour scheme possible, we finally set about designing a smart car that was within our corporate colour guidelines. The smart car that was being shipped up to smart Manchester was originally a True Blue Pulse with Silver Tridium®. As red is our corporate colour, we had smart replace the panels with Phat Red coloured ones. This is actually a hue of red that is very close to our own corporate red so we were very pleased with this. Normally as a rule, our logo only ever appears in white with a dark red drop shadow, but as our smart car had the Silver Tridium®, we made an exception to our own corporate identity guidelines and changed our logo to reflective silver and dark red for this instance.

When we initially ordered the smart car, we asked for smart’s recommendation for a local vinyl sign printers. They directed us to Signs Express on Trafford Park. We visited Signs Express to discuss the various types of printing techniques they used and which would be most suitable for the type of design we had in mind. Because we knew our design was only going to use a maximum of two colours, we opted for reflective vinyl graphics for maximum effect. This worked particularly well with the silver part of our logo. The type of vinyl they used for this part of the logo looks silver in daylight, but then becomes highly reflective when dark.

While we were at Signs Express, we discussed how they went about laying out designs and getting the vinyl printed at the right size in relationship to the various vehicles they are required to work with. They in fact use exact templates of vehicles supplied by the car manufactories so they can take into account problems such as door handles, hinges, wing mirrors, aerodynamic ridges etc.

Because we scanned an actual photo of a smart car into the computer and created our own accurate vehicle template to work on. Signs Express used our own files to work from and print from. This worked out ideal for us in keeping the overall cost down as we had done the majority of the work ourselves. Signs Express informed us that they often get customers approaching them for signs with absolutely no reference material at all, let alone actual computer files to work from. So for us to supply actual design files that they could use on their system worked out ideal for both parties. The software they use to layout their designs and print from is very similar to Adobe Illustrator, which we used to create our visuals so all that was required to get the job done was to email our files to Signs Express and sign off a print out from their system.

Everything was pretty much out of our hands now. Once the smart car was delivered from the factory to smart Manchester, they took the car to Signs Express for them to apply the graphics. Once Signs Express had done their stuff, they returned the car to smart Manchester and all we had to do was collect the car. So, this was the first time we were going to see our smart car since ordering it 6 weeks ago and we were looking forward with both excitement and anticipation to seeing it fully complete with the graphics applied and we were not disappointed.

Both smart Manchester and Signs Express did a wonderful job and we are delighted with newest member to jgr22. In fact since purchasing our smart car, we bought a 1:18 scale replica from smart Manchester and asked Signs Express to recreate the graphics they did for us on the replica. We now have a complete replica of jgr22’s company car taking pride of place in our studio.

[/pay]

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