Driving A Smart Car, Lovin NYC

Thanks to Zipcar, I had the opportunity to drive one of those Smart cars today.  Overall, I thought the ride was pretty snappy.  I’m guessing it’s a 4 cylinder because it was lagging behind on the highway, but it was zooming through city driving.  I noticed that the car liked to stay in lower gears and even shifted down more often than I would’ve wanted.  This made all the difference in the world when I tried to push it a bit on the highway.  Maybe there’s a way to use the very broad accelerator which almost covered the whole underside of my foot to make it shift to a higher gear.  Dunno.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that it runs on midget tires.  The car’s roomier than you think, sits two people rather comfortably, and perhaps even another person in the back.  I’m a little taller than 5’ 8” and I noticed that the windshield angle is slightly odd, it kept cutting stuff off at the top which I expected to see - like traffic lights.  This might have something to do with the fact that there’s no hood, so when I stop near the lines for the crosswalk, I’m a little further up than I would be in a regular sedan.  The brakes weren’t as responsive as I would’ve liked considering that it drives pretty fast in the city.  But then again, since the car’s pretty light, it does stop faster than you think when you add it all up.  I’ll have to mention that the suspension is not really a highlight of the car, add to that the light weight of the car and the mini-tires and potholes become giant chasms.  Bad news for the person drinking coffee in the passenger seat.  It has a nice large sun roof and we spent a good deal of time trying to find a way to slide it open - don’t bother it does no such thing.  If you close the sun shade over it though, the car gets pretty claustrophobic fast.  One thing bothered me though, the handle on the shift was really tiny, and even if they added stitched leather to make it look nicer, it felt cheap, as a golf ball was sitting under that leather.  You’ll get a bunch of people rubbernecking to check out the car. You’ll get a fair amount of people tailgating you because they think they can outrun you or people cutting you off near the toll lines because they think you have more space to give - and they’re right.  Suddenly though, you’ll notice your parking vision transforming as you realize, yes, you CAN fit in there, and yes, you can make that turn in one go.

But the best part was driving the FDR across the southern tip of Manhattan early on a Saturday morning, feeling the bare road slip under you and watching the parade of magnificent bridges cascading one after another over you.  And fording two rivers, colliding into each other under those crisp eastern crests straight into the mighty Atlantic.