Drove a Smart ForTwo yesterday

I've seen the fifth gear crash video, doesn't mean anything. They also ceded at the end that the passengers in the Smart would surely have been dead.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SW03ES @ Sep 11 2007, 10:51 PM) [snapback]511054[/snapback]</div>

First if there are plenty of rear engined cars available name 5 for sale today in in US market. Since the 60's I can think of only 3, the Beetle, the Corvair, and the Porsche 911. Mid-engined cars don't count, though they have the same advantage of having a large crush zone in the front of the vehicle. A rear engined car has the center of mass of the engine behind the plane of the rear axle. In fact the Smart may not even be a rear engined car, it may technically be mid-engined.

Oversteer is safer than oversteer because you don't loose steering control of the vehicle and your vehicle will stay in your lane when you recover from the skid. With understeer you loose steering control of the vehicle until the skid stops and the entire vehicle will slide into another lane. I do agree it takes more skill to recover from oversteer than understeer. Understeer is self-correcting. Should we design cars to have inferior driving dynamics just because our drivers are unskilled? As you said, modern computer driver's aids can help take care of this lack of driver education.

The engine location has a huge impact on crash engineering. The larger the crush zone the easier it is to allow the vehicle to crush at a slow and controlled rate. This is facilitated in mid and rear engined cars by the extra room in the front of the vehicle.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Sep 12 2007, 11:54 AM) [snapback]511375[/snapback]</div>

On my test drive I took the 2nd generation Smart up to 100 kph and it was rock steady. I've also seen many 1st generation Smarts in Germany cruising at 100 to 120 kph on the autobahn with no problems.

The Top Gear video was made to make the Smart look bad, they hate small, economy cars. Of course they also crashed a regular economy car into the barrier and it did just as bad. Do you really expect to walk away from any crash into a concrete barrier at 70 mph?

If you want some useful information look at the video where Mercedes offset crashes the Smart into a E-class.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SW03ES @ Sep 11 2007, 10:51 PM) [snapback]511054[/snapback]</div>

First if there are plenty of rear engined cars available name 5 for sale today in in US market. Since the 60's I can think of only 3, the Beetle, the Corvair, and the Porsche 911. Mid-engined cars don't count, though they have the same advantage of having a large crush zone in the front of the vehicle. A rear engined car has the center of mass of the engine behind the plane of the rear axle. In fact the Smart may not even be a rear engined car, it may technically be mid-engined.

Oversteer is safer than oversteer because you don't loose steering control of the vehicle and your vehicle will stay in your lane when you recover from the skid. With understeer you loose steering control of the vehicle until the skid stops and the entire vehicle will slide into another lane. I do agree it takes more skill to recover from oversteer than understeer. Understeer is self-correcting. Should we design cars to have inferior driving dynamics just because our drivers are unskilled? As you said, modern computer driver's aids can help take care of this lack of driver education.

The engine location has a huge impact on crash engineering. The larger the crush zone the easier it is to allow the vehicle to crush at a slow and controlled rate. This is facilitated in mid and rear engined cars by the extra room in the front of the vehicle.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Sep 12 2007, 11:54 AM) [snapback]511375[/snapback]</div>

On my test drive I took the 2nd generation Smart up to 100 kph and it was rock steady. I've also seen many 1st generation Smarts in Germany cruising at 100 to 120 kph on the autobahn with no problems.

The Top Gear video was made to make the Smart look bad, they hate small, economy cars. Of course they also crashed a regular economy car into the barrier and it did just as bad. Do you really expect to walk away from any crash into a concrete barrier at 70 mph?

If you want some useful information look at the video where Mercedes offset crashes the Smart into a E-class.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Sep 12 2007, 12:54 PM) [snapback]511375[/snapback]</div>

Thats just the thing, crumpling is not a bad thing, thats how forces are absorbed in an impact.

As for not many people doing 70MPH in a smart, have you driven on US roads? People will be driving them faster than that.

There are surface roads here people do 70 on.

I never said there were many, I just said there were rear engined cars. For the record I was lumping mid and rear engined cars together since in this example theres no reason not to.

As for mid engined cars not counting? Why not? For the purposes of this example where we're talking about cars with no engine in the front then they absolutely count. When you allow mid engined cars there are plenty.

I know what a rear engined car is.

There have been more than that. The Beetle, the Corvair and the 911 yes, but also the Delorean, the Karmann Ghia, the VW Bus, from Porsche the 959 and the 356, a bunch of Fiats and Renaults.

I think you mean understeer is safer than oversteer. And yes, I do know what oversteer and understeer are, I've taken several professional driving courses.

Driver's aids help, but they don't make up for an inherantly unsafe design. Rear engined cars are inherantly prone to oversteer and difficult to handle in emergency or adverse roadbed conditions, thats one reason why most carmakers have abandoned them. Drivers aids help, but they aren't perfect. Have you ever driven a Porsche 911? I have, the stability aids help but you can still get the rear end out very easily.

Rear engined cars have inferior driving dynamics to mid engined cars, and even to a lot of front engined cars. And yes, for normal passenger cars predictable handling is more important than sporty driving dynamics.

Oversteer isn't the only issue with rear engined cars, lack of weight over the front can make them prone to understeer too. Ever read Ralph Nader's famous book Unsafe at Any Speed?

Its probably a moot point anyways, as you said my guess is the Smart is mid-engined.

So show me some data that shows any indication of mid engined cars having better crash ratings or lower injury rates per vehicle than front engined cars? No such data exists.

Again, I never said it didn't have an impact on engineering, I meant the end result its not a detriment to the safety of front engined cars.

Did you watch the Top Gear video? They liked the smart, they weren't trying to make it look bad.

And they absolutely don't hate small cars, they hate the Prius.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Sep 14 2007, 01:08 AM) [snapback]512372[/snapback]</div>

The 2nd generation Smart ForTwo is not available for sale yet in the US. However, Smart USA is doing a tour of the U.S. taking 2nd generation demo vehicles to major cities for test drives. They came to Birmingham, AL 7-September. This is how I was able to test drive a 2nd generation car.

I did get the two publications mixed up. I was thinking of the Top Gear, the BBC television program that I occasionally watch on BBC America hosted by Jeremy Clarkston. He never has a bad thing to say about a sports car or luxury car except that it should be faster and never has much good to say about a small car except that it is cheap.