Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Smart Car for two - it's so cute

I sided a G-Wiz that pulled out of a side road on my bike last week, did fuck all to me other than get me swearing, nasty looking crack in the side of the G-Wiz. Wouldn't drive one of those.

Smart cars, OTOH, are huge fun to throw around town, wouldn't want to take one out onto a motorway tho!!
 
kabbes said:
The biggest problem with the Smart car is the price, I think. The cheapest model will cost you about £7,000 and a more typical mid-range model closer to £8,500-£9,000. For that money, there are any number of other superminis out there -- you can get a reasonable mid-range Fiat Panda, for example, for that kind of price. It'll do similar mpg to the Smart (Smart is about 60mph and Panda 1.2 ECO is about 57mpg) but you'll be happier on the motorway, have a smoother ride around town and be less constrained in space, whilst still haveing a thoroughly small car. Pretty much every manufacturer has their own supermini and they are almost all better value than the Smart.

If the Smart was more like £4,000 I might have been seriously interested. But priced against the other superminis, not a chance.
Click to expand...


This!!! I'd take Fiat Panda over the Smart any day of the week. May not be a trendy but it's a far better car both in the city and on main roads.
 
Cobbles said:
Noddy's car was actually a car - the G-wizz is an electrically powered quadricycle - that means that it didn't need to pass any boring old safety tests. Top Gear paid to have one tested to NCAP crash standards - the test dummy had to be cut into sections so that it could be removed from the sorry pile of scrap that was left after a 20MPH collision.
Click to expand...

It was a , and offset. The G-wiz certainly didn't come out of it at all well, though.
 
I don't know if it counts as a 'supermini' or just a small car, but surely the Fiat 500 is the hottest small vehicle on the road today

fiat%20500.jpg



Very, very nice looking.
 
The Fiat 500 is supercute, but it is also fairly expensive for what you get, IMO.
 
It's also a shit car to drive....much like the Beetle. Looks good, but not all that. The Abarth is probably better but the bog standard ones aren't as good as a Panda and the diesel is a dog. 0-60 takes a calender.
 
kabbes said:
The Fiat 500 is supercute, but it is also fairly expensive for what you get, IMO.
Click to expand...

Well the starting price for the basic one is £8100, which isn't too bad.

The Abarths will be about £14500, but I'm not sue when they come over here. January maybe.
 
Griff said:
Well the starting price for the basic one is £8100, which isn't too bad.
Click to expand...
We'll have to differ there -- I think that £8100 is a lot for the basic model. And a mid-range one (which is where most people will want to go) will be more like £9,500. It's a cute-as-hell design, but if other things are more important to you than the design, it seems a little steep.

Saying that, you can normally get a Fiat from www.fiatsupersaver.com for about a 30% less than the RRP, which does make it look a LOT more attractive. I bought a brand new Fiat Panda 4x4 with an RRP of £10,500 from them for £7,800. I'm guessing that you could get that 500 for about £7,500, which would make it pretty attractive.
 
My wife likes them, but to be truthful, being 6' tall and a bloke, I couldn't see myself owning one, as cute as they are. :D
 
Yes, ditto. I could potentially see the kabbess owning one, except that (a) there is nowhere for the dog; and (b) she is a fucking speed freak and any car that doesn't do 0-60 in under 8 seconds and have the ability to take bends at whatever speed she deems fit is unlikely to get a look-in :D
 
My GF has a smart car. She likes it a lot. Very cheep to run, and they fall in a low or free VED band.

I'm 6'7 and can fit into it better than most other small cars.
 
If anything should be banned on safety grounds, it is giant SUVs that are built of a single rigid chassis that acts as a battering ram in the event of an accident, all because they manage to get around safety laws on the basis that they are intended for "off-road use". Yeah, right. That mother in the X5 picking up her kids from school is just bombing it around off-road every day.
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
You must be joking - the Smart is quite possibly the worst handling car you can buy today.

As for the G-Whiz, they should be banned on safety grounds.
Click to expand...

The thing about the G-Wiz is that you should be comparing to motorbikes and trikes - because it is a quadricycle, not a car. Therefore silly to compare its safety test results with cars. Compare it with bikes and its probably a lot better.

Giles..
 
kabbes said:
If anything should be banned on safety grounds, it is giant SUVs that are built of a single rigid chassis that acts as a battering ram in the event of an accident, all because they manage to get around safety laws on the basis that they are intended for "off-road use". Yeah, right.
Click to expand...

Bit of a myth that - In Europe anyway.

Most Chelsea Tractor type SUVs have been monocoques for a good while now. The X5 is one of them BTW. A solid chassis is more the sign of a proper workhorse.

Similarly the safety regs thing. That only applies to the US & IIRC none of the vehicles affected are for sale in the EU, other than personal imports.
 
Ooh, you learn something new every day and all that.

Still, putting bull bars on the front of some of them doesn't help, eh? And I'm pretty sure they still aren't the epitome of safety for other road users, even without being a solid chassis!
 
Err, Bull Bars had to conform to the same standards (& yes, I know they are arguable) in the EU a good while ago IIRC & all the pre-regulation ones were effectively banned on even agricultural vehicles last year.
 
T & P said:
I don't know if it counts as a 'supermini' or just a small car, but surely the Fiat 500 is the hottest small vehicle on the road today
Click to expand...

I hope it is better than the original 500 - I had one for a while when I was in Switzerland. Evil handling, unreliable little slug of a thing. Its petrol consumption & insurance were the only things it had going for it.
 
So the ones that I see are illegal in point of fact? That's something worth knowing.

Is it "illegal" in the sense that using an italic font on your numberplate is illegal?
 
There are probably still some of the pre-reg ones on the road but yup, they now need to carry the appropriate conformity marks etc. Probably depends on where you are but up here, the police are pretty hot on that sort of thing.

Effective up from: May 25th 2007
DIRECTIVE 2005/66/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 26 October 2005relating to the use of frontal protection systems on motor vehicles and amending Council Directive 70/156/EEC. The purpose of this Directive is to improve pedestrian and vehicle safety through passive measures. It lays down technicalrequirements for the type-approval of motor vehicles as regards frontal protection systems supplied as original equipment fitted to vehicles or as separate technical units.

Under the new rules, frontal protection systems for motor vehicles of class M1 (up to 8 persons) and N1 (goods up to 3,5 tonnes) must comply with testing requirements proving that are designed in a way that improves pedestrian safety and reduces the number of injuries. The directive, which is part of the European road safety action programme, may be supplemented by national measures to prohibit or restrict the use of frontal protection systems already on the market before its entry into force. The new provisions will be applicable nine months after publication in the EU Official Journal. They will be reviewed in the light of further research and experience gained during the first four years of application.
Click to expand...

Some more info here:

http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=8557&topic=Transport

Looks like they are still making an amount of it up as they go along.
 
Giles said:
The thing about the G-Wiz is that you should be comparing to motorbikes and trikes - because it is a quadricycle, not a car. Therefore silly to compare its safety test results with cars. Compare it with bikes and its probably a lot better.
Click to expand...

A least on a bike you have a chance to bail out and get clear, in those death traps you're stuck inside.

Awful, awful things, that are probably setting the cause of "green" motoring back years.
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
A least on a bike you have a chance to bail out and get clear, in those death traps you're stuck inside.

Awful, awful things, that are probably setting the cause of "green" motoring back years.
Click to expand...

Why are they "awful"?

They are light and efficient. And still safer than being on a motorbike or a pushbike.

Why should all vehicles have to big and heavy? It just isn't necessary. You get less range the heavier the vehicle, logically.

G-Wiz is meant as a short distance city commuter vehicle, not for high speed environments.

Giles..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Cloo
  • Poll Poll
How old is your car?
2
Replies
51
Views
860
Chz
Chz
cee
What car did you learn to drive in?
2
Replies
48
Views
1K
Chz
Chz
Elpenor
Hire Car Insurance
Replies
7
Views
296
Winot
Winot
Elpenor
Should I repair my car?
2 3
Replies
89
Views
2K
Dogsauce
Dogsauce
Idaho
How much have you just spent to get the same old car back?
Replies
17
Views
453
nogojones
nogojones
Back
Top Bottom