The best laid plans! After purchasing a dedicated dog guard for the fortwo (at great expense) it turns out our Lakeland Terrier hates the spaciousness and refinement of the Smart, instead preferring a crate plonked in the back of my wife’s noisy, bouncy Abarth 595. I should’ve known… bloody terriers.
You might be wondering why such a predicament necessitates something as drastic as a change of vehicle and a full answer to that would quickly become an essay; in a nutshell I’ll just say that historically I’ve needed to carry the dog around more often than my wife and for all its brilliance the 595 isn’t the most practical car for bumping up potholed tracks and parking in lumpy, muddy laybys, to say nothing of longer motorway journeys and holidays.
You might also be wondering why the answer to this problem is another four-wheel-drive Panda given that I freely admitted to finding the last one a little vanilla. Hopefully the photo above – of the punchy Tropicalia Yellow paint, gleaming red tow hooks, and shiny silver faux skid plate – provides a satisfactory explanation by itself, but essentially the Cross brings all of the capability and character of my 4×4 – including that wonderful Twinair engine – along with an extra dollop of Tonka toy childishness that makes it look and feel much less ordinary. It’s probably the model I should’ve bought first time round but then I might never have owned a Smart fortwo, so no regrets there!
In fact, the longish drive required to swap fortwo for Fiat served as an opportune moment to reflect on my time with the Smart and I came to the conclusion that, whilst some of the “purity” of the original concept might have been lost, the third generation C453 could well turn out to be peak fortwo (especially if Smart turn away from producing innovative city cars to concentrate on their much-rumoured me-too electric CUV instead). Despite its relatively minuscule size the fortwo is comfortable, luxurious, and practical (dog crate notwithstanding!); it can also top 400 miles between fill-ups, something the EDs and EQs can only dream of*. These past 11 months confirmed what I already suspected: the fortwo is an engineering marvel in the same mould as the original Mini and I’m very glad to have owned one.
The Cross understandably feels absolutely massive right now but in a way that’s precisely why I purchased it: swallowing the dog crate should be an easy task – I might even get to keep one of the seats up in the back! – as will transporting the hound about in all weathers and for all distances. I’m slightly miffed to have bought it as winter is in full retreat but that’s why yellow is the best colour – it looks as good in the sun as it does in the snow.
* This isn’t a criticism of the fortwo as an EV but more Smart’s lack of investment in the platform as battery technology has moved forward. The 24kWh and 40kWh battery packs found in first generation Nissan Leaf take up the same physical space but the latter almost doubles the car’s range; imagine if we’d seen similar updates made to the electric 453s over time. No, it wouldn’t have made the fortwo into a behemoth of range, but a real world increase from 50 to 100 miles? That’s a big, big jump…