Smart ForFour Brabus
Specifications
Engine:
Turbocharged, quad-valve four-cylinder displacing 1468cc; 132kW at 6000rpm, 230Nm at 3500rpm.
Transmission:
Five-speed gearbox, front-wheel drive.
Performance:
220km/h, 0-100km/h in 6.8sec.
Price:
About £17 000 (R198 000)
A Smart car with 132kW - that's a considerable way away from how the Smart was conceived, given that the original microcar came with just 34kW, but in parallel with the history of its Mini rival the march of reality eventually renders the original concept nothing more than a signpost and a gene pool.
Still, 132kW is a lot, even for the four-door, normal-sized supermini interpretation of Smart's brand values, the ForFour. For this we can thank German tuning company and official Smart souper-upper Brabus, long-time purveyor of powerful Benzes and run by Bodo Buschmann in Bottrop (he's the "bus" in Brabus).
It makes sense. The ForFour is aimed at people of youthful outlook and above-average co-ordinatory skills. They may well also have some sort of active lifestyle even if, like mine, it exists mainly in the head.
The ForFour is meant to be a cool, fun car; a German take on the role that the Mini (British-inspired and built, albeit by a German company) plays so well. Yet, for all its visual funkiness, a regular ForFour is a curiously inert drive.
You don't tease it through fast corners with a smidge of steering and a balance of power; you just aim, assume and think about something else. It doesn't draw you in, unlike a Mini or a Mitsubishi Colt.
But the Brabus is intriguingly, refreshingly different. This is a hot hatchback with the temperament the best hot hatches used to have when we zoomed around in Peugeot 205 GTI's, Renault 5 GT Turbos and quad-valve Golf GTI's: sharp and punchy and not embarrassed to scrabble and tug at the front when there's a momentary excess of power over grip.
Cars in which you, not they, set the limits are always the most fun.
The ForFour Brabus is turbocharged, and very effectively, to give it a fine flood of energy right through the speed range in which you want it the most. You don't rev it hard to extract pace and it sounds a bit boomy and agitated if you do; better to change up sooner and land right back in the next gear's vat of energy.
I'm driving it along, and up and down, the roads that make up the auto playground of the Alpes-Maritimes - roads with fast sweeps and tight hairpins that bring speeds right down before you can feed the engine again.
A car with a poor low-speed response will be scuppered here but the Brabus pulls out of the vicious bends with enthusiasm.
But something strange is happening on these power-fuelled turns. All that torque, that muscular thrust, is opposing the front wheels' natural tendency to want to straighten, applying odd forces within the steering system. The steering wheel is "freezing" in my hands so I have to apply effort to straighten it.
This sounds unnerving and it shouldn't happen, but it's not dangerous and it's easy to cope with once you're aware it's imminent. In a strange and welcome way, what is really a dynamic flaw adds the character that comes from imperfection and eccentricity.
And it's all the more forgivable when you feel how firmly this fortissimo ForFour hangs on to the road, how little it leans in the corners, and how - unlike its softer siblings - it tightens its trajectory when you ease the power to let you point it into a tightening bend.
Road-ridge thumps
The steering responds more quickly, too, thanks to a 10 percent reduction in the steering ratio. Driving pleasure is made of such things; this is a car that lets you play with it instead of just operating it.
If there's a downside, it is that sharp ridges and jagged bits of road-maintenance backlog can cause quite a thump, although the ride is otherwise calm enough.
So the ForFour Brabus is fast. How fast? A lot faster than the Mitsubishi Colt CZT, whose basic engine it shares. The Colt is considerably cheaper than the Smart's estimated £17 000 (which sounds a lot until you realise it's an entirely typical price for a Mini Cooper S by the time you've added a typical sprinkling of options, most of which the Smart has as standard), but the Colt manages 112kW and a 7.8-second 0-100.
For the Smart, we're talking an extra 20kW and 6.8 seconds - but there is a catch. To feel the full potential, you need to run the Smart on super unleaded petrol. Use normal unleaded, for which the Colt is calibrated, and you lose up to 10kW on a hot day when detonation is more likely to occur and the ignition timing is automatically retarded.
It will also use more fuel, so it's better to put up with the hefty price premium we suffer here in the UK for super unleaded and enjoy the Smart at its most efficient.
You've probably noticed that this Brabus-tuned machine sits quite low. A tape measure would quantify this as lowered by 30mm at the front and 28mm at the rear and the suspension is firmer to suit, but there's something odd about those 17" wheels.
Fat rear tackies a trade-off
For possibly the first time in a front-wheel drive production car, the ForFour Brabus has fatter rear tyres than front ones. Is this misplaced go-faster visual vanity? No, says Berthold Franz, head of engineering for the Smart-Brabus collaboration. It's a trade-off between weight and grip, as required at each end.
Does it work? You'd assume from the foregoing that it does but I can't give a definitive answer because the car I drove was wearing four equal-size winter-tread tyres in case the Alpes-Maritimes were engulfed with snow (it had even settled on the beach at Nice the previous day).
Given the Smart's prowess even on these play-it-safe tyres, though, it's unlikely that the correct footwear would make it any worse.
So the dynamics are convincing but buyers will want to advertise their cars' abilities to others, so the way it looks is also important. The changes are subtle: downwardly extended sills and valances, a twin-pipe exhaust, mesh in the front grille and a rear spoiler to reduce aerodynamic lift by 50kg at 220km/h.
Even at a less extreme pace, there's enough extra force at the back to help keep the Smart stable if braking through a fast bend.
The cabin has lots of leather with silver seams and plentiful aluminium-look detailing but the steering wheel is a touch too complex and its lumps and bumps complicate the tactility but otherwise the cabin is as podular-Smart as ever.
And, being a ForFour, it has a sliding rear seat and plenty of space for a small car - much more than a Mini, for example. Maybe that will be its trump card - four doors without looking family-centred, yet pace and pleasure on a par with its quickest, highest-image, rivals.
I'm not a great fan of the regular ForFour but in this one all the ingredients have finally cooked. And it tastes great.
THE RIVALS
FORD FIESTA ST, £13 595 (R158 000
Cheaper and less powerful (at 112kW) than the Smart, Ford's latter-day XR2 is fun to drive but lacks the pacy edge to make it great. Good value but unsatisfying.
MINI COOPER S, £15 180 (R176 000)
The Mini success story is partly down to the supercharged, 135kW Cooper S's recipe of style, pace and entertainment. Not much cabin space, good residual value.
RENAULT SPORT CLIO 182, £14 700 (R170 500)
In some ways this is the best value of the lot, with plentiful equipment, 136kW and endless amusement on straights and bends. Cheaper Cup version is more hardcore. - The Independent, London