I’ve been looking for a new Smart for a while now, and a few days ago i saw, that, a dealer on Funen, had a nice fully loaded “penguin” (white on a black frame), that sounded amazing on paper, so we almost crossed the country, to try it out, and hopefully take it home, for at good price.
According to the online ads and their website, it was a nicely specced model, with a sub 100.000km odometer:
However, the car we showed up for, didn’t quite live up to what it said on the box.
The odometer reading was correct. It was a cabrio with fabric seats and it was a 54 HP Diesel, but besides that, it was the lowest spec Smart, that I’ve seen so far.
No aircon, no heated seats, no cruise control, no leather steering wheel, no electrical windows and no servo steering, and no automatic gearbox (only the semi-automatic where you still have to change gears yourself).
Beside that, it looked as if the reason for the low mileage was from it being hidden away in the back of a barn. It looked like the fabric and the hood had been very mouldy, and there were scratches and signs of wear in unusual places.
We test drove it anyway, mostly because my experiences with with 451 Cabrio’s are limited, and I’ve never sat behind the wheel of one.
The test drive quickly made two things apparent.
The wind noise above 50 km/h was terrible!
I’m guessing that the front window has been changed, and that an gap had become too large, or a rubber strip was forgotten.
The other thing was…
…YES, I must have a Cabrio 😍
After the test drive, I returned the keys, and did what I could, to be polite, diplomatic and brutally honest, about what they were advertising compared to what they were selling.
The salesman took it very nicely, (and of cause it was his colleague that had written the ad), and the day after I could see that the ad was edited to reflect the product.
Well, we got a roadtrip to Funen, but I’m still looking for “the car”.
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