Smart #3 review

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New-chapter Smart abandons its roots and goes after style-conscious, value-savvy EV buyers instead

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Handsome though it undoubtedly is, the Smart #3 is the kind of car to make you wonder just what its reimagined manufacturer is really all about.

Funnily enough, if you'd asked me while I was still at the wheel, I’m fairly sure I’d have been none the wiser. But with the benefit of a little detached perspective, it’s becoming clearer which direction ‘the new Smart’ - the brand as refounded in 2019 and co-funded by Mercedes-Benz and Chinese giant Geely - is headed off in.

Clearly, this is no longer the maker of innovative microcars that it once was. And from a business perspective at the very least, that might not be such a bad thing. Still, if you were on a mission to show the world that you had the same fearless spirit that fathered the most bold and singular small car of the last half-century, this just isn’t what you’d do.

We might let them off the decision to kick-start the revival with an electric compact crossover, the Smart #1. Sooner or later, they will need to sell some cars, after all. 

But to move next to a larger, lower, more expensive and more desirable mid-sized coupé-crossover like the Smart #3 - a rival for anything from a Polestar 2 to a Tesla Model 3, or even the Cupra Born - hardly says 'I’m innovative', does it? It hardly says 'pick me, I’m different'.

Right now, where mid-sized EVs are concerned, I’m not sure that we even know what different looks like - but this certainly isn’t it.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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What the #3 actually reveals is that the future products of the company that made it will likely be much more mainstream, conventional - imitative, even - than those of its past. When you challenge them on the topic, Smart insiders suggest this is because the culture of some 50% of the company now "has a hard time being creative".

“In China,” one senior ex-Mercedes employee told us, “imitating your rivals is how you show you’re competitive. It’s not frowned upon to ape the same styling, technology or positioning of another car; it’s encouraged.”

Instead of asking which existing EV this car is most like, it might be easier to ask where Smart isn't liberally borrowing from. I can see bits of Tesla, Cupra, Volkswagen, Polestar and others in the #3 - but, inevitably, perhaps more Mercedes than anything else.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

You could call that a simplistic way to explain why the Smart we’re looking at here so plainly blends lots of design cues from existing electric cars: patronising, dismissive, mildly xenophobic even. Yet here we are. The #3 seems to take bits of inspiration from hither and yon, massaging them together into a car that looks quite attractive and plays the added-style hatchback effectively enough. But it somehow doesn’t make something entirely ‘of its own’ in the process. It’s pretty but undeniably derivative, which somehow seems anti-Smart.

The biggest influence on the car’s design, both inside and out, appears to be the in-house one. On this evidence, Smart looks set to become Mercedes’ new youthful ‘feeder’ brand, covering territory and plugging niches that the mothership itself can’t but reaching out to its buyers in fundamentally similar ways: via light bars, touchscreens, digital technology and lashings of chintzy chromified plastic. Well, at least some of the digital technology will need to be a whole lot better than this car offers - but we will get to that. 

Geely, we can only assume, must be entirely happy with this Mercedesification of the brand it bought into. Where Smart conquers, perhaps Mercedes can inherit - a little like you can imagine Seat and Cupra doing for Audi or Fiat and Abarth for Alfa Romeo. But if you happened to like Smart's old focus on really distinguishing compactness and on simplicity and function rather than more affected notions of style, desirability or ‘perceived quality’? Well, I suspect that means you will no longer be catered to.

The #3 itself, Smart claims, caters to younger buyers than the #1 does. It uses the same SEA platform as its sister car (as well as the Volvo EX30, among others) but stretches it out to a slightly longer wheelbase and significantly overall footprint, which it uses to offset a roofline that’s some 80mm lower than that of the chunkier #1. 

Like in the #1, there’s either one rear-mounted motor or one per axle and nearly 430bhp in all. Like the #1, it offers a choice of lithium-iron-phosphate (49kWh) and nickel-manganese-cobalt (66kWh) batteries. But because it’s lower than its sister car, it’s also more aerodynamic (as well as being only 60kg heavier), and that grants range of as much as 283 miles on the WLTP combined lab test - which, while far from segment-leading for the money, isn’t shabby.

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INTERIOR

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SUVs with swoopy rooflines typically offer the kind of passenger space that makes road testers scratch their heads (when we’re not mashing them into the headlining), but the #3 isn’t the worst of them.

The car’s designers were careful precisely how they constructed its lowered profile. Compared with a #1, 20mm came out of the ride height, 20mm out of the cabin floor, 20mm from a lower-mounted seat and the final 20mm from the line of the roof itself. So you do feel like you’re sitting fairly low in this car, and there’s reasonable head room left over, even for taller adults in both rows of seats.

Unlike the #1, the #3 gets sportier-looking seats with integrated headrests - and they just poked me right in the nape of the neck throughout our testing. The seats also lack decent side support and lumbar adjustment.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Leg room in the back is adult-appropriate also, while the #3’s boot is much larger than the one in its sister car.

From the driver’s seat, there’s an increasingly familiar story to tell as regards control layout: physical switchgear for secondary systems is scarce and a great deal is controlled through the freestanding 12.8in multimedia touchscreen.

Although the cars are related at a very basic level, we’re not quite in Volvo EX30 territory here as regards ‘digital convergence’ and usability. The Smart does have a small instrument display (and a head-up display on upper-trim models), as well as conventionally placed window and door lock controls, and the screen itself also has a line of physical shortcut keys beneath it that help you to navigate it - a bit. But lordy, it’s complicated -  and annoyingly distracting to operate while you’re driving.

More to the point, Smart gives you an awful lot of ‘driver assistance’ systems that are at once irritating and intrusive and needlessly complex to turn off. 

Counting the adaptive cruise control, there are three different systems working to keep you in your lane and as many active or driver-selectable manual speed-limit detection and alert systems. These are also variously deactivated in different multimedia menus, so even once you’re familiar with the necessary process, it takes about 30sec worth of prodding, swiping and scrolling to turn off all of them.

Or you can leave them on - but then have the navigation voice prompts telling you that you’re speeding when the speed-limit recognition system says you’re not, for example. It’s all just software, Smart says; and much of it, we're assured, will be fixed ‘over the air’. Well, it’s not good enough: not accessible enough, not organised and arrayed thoughtfully enough and not well tuned enough. 

If it were mine, I wouldn’t be inclined to drive the car much until it had been sorted – which would soon enough become a problem for the dealer.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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The driving experience of the #3 underlying all that bothersome tech is actually reasonably impressive. Unlike with the drivetrain, Smart hasn’t just carried over the #1’s suspension rates and systems software calibration; this car gets its own spring rates, damper settings, steering configuration and stability-control tuning. 

Even the single-motor version has lots of torque on tap from low speeds. The permanent-magnet motor is the kind that runs shorter of potency more noticably than others might as you get beyond 50mph. Even so, 268bhp feels like plenty of grunt for the #3 almost anywhere you go looking for some, so the case for spending more on the dual-motor Brabus version seems pretty thin, even though it unquestionably feels quicker still.

Smart says it's working on a 'low' regen mode that will let the car coast farther on a trailing throttle and might mitigate its drivability quirks. Like everything else, it will be an over-the-air update if it comes.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Smart uses selectable driving modes to try to add spice and interest to the driving experience: Eco, Comfort, Sport (and Brabus on the dual-motor model). Mercifully, none of these add a synthesised noise to accompany the power delivery - although elsewhere the car makes a few others to add some cutesy character (it sounds like it’s blowing cartoon bubbles when you lock it, while the indicator ticking is like a tribute to a 1980s Tomytronic video-headset game.

Comfort mode is the one to which the car defaults, and it delivers fairly linear accelerator pedal calibration (in Sport and Brabus modes, the pedal is much too sensitive as you tip into its travel).

Brake-pedal response is also reasonably linear, but trailing-throttle regeneration is more problematic and can lead to drivability problems. 

It can be adjusted between standard and strong via – you’ve guessed it – the touchscreen. Neither calibration eradicates the annoying second’s pause that occurs between you lifting off the accelerator and feeling the car start to slow, though, which tends to cause you to over-brake at times and makes smooth driving, efficient regen and good conservation of momentum harder to achieve than it need be.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Smart stops short of describing the #3 as a sports car, but it clearly wanted it to be capable of entertaining to a point. A little like the Model 3, it feels lower and leaner than the average mid-sized EV. Riding on 19in and 20in wheels wider in the rim than those of the #1, it has plenty of grip, a little bit of rear-drive cornering balance, taut lateral body control and handling that you can at least attempt to enjoy - once you banish all of the nannying aids that seek to get in your way.

The steering tuning doesn’t always tempt you to explore the car’s capabities, because it’s a little inconsistently weighted and has woolly, ill-defined on-centre feel. You have to deactivate the electronic stability control to prevent it from intruding on keener cornering needlessly early and stifling power; but at least by doing so you seem to automatically deactivate the irksome lane-departure warning system as well.

Thus configured, the chassis has enough power at the rear wheels to begin to rotate into positive attitude enough power and to feel lively and responsive underneath you, while remaining balanced enough in its wider grip level to keep the front axle from pushing wide. Pretty soon, you discover the ESC Off mode doesn’t really mean ‘off’, so there’s a limit to the extent to which you can explore the car’s cornering balance. But it remains a marginally more entertaining way to navigate an interesting road than the average EV affords.

The ride is medium-firm and feels just a little wooden and short on travel at times over bigger inputs. Generally, though, it’s comfortable and settled at a cruise and, although prone to the odd clunk over sharp edges, better isolated than you get in some sportier EVs.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Prices on the #3 start just under £33,000 for the entry-level, 49kWh Pro version: which, compared with plenty of rivals of similar size, is surprisingly good value. The larger battery, and a few equipment upgrades, add £4000 to that price for the Pro+ model, with the richer Premium trim level (three-phase AC charging, premium audio, part-leather seats and a heat pump included) priced at just under £40,000. The dual-motor, 422bhp Brabus version, meanwhile, offers sub-4.0sec 0-62mph performance from little more than £45k. So, all in, that's Tesla Model 3-busting value - though the car falls a little way short of Model 3 range.

Our testing suggested that both single- and dual-motor, bigger-batteried versions of the car ought to be good for their WLTP combined claimed range figures (circa 280 and 250 miles) in averagely warm conditions. DC rapid charging is possible at up to 130kW in the case of 49kWh models, and at up to 150kW for the 66kWh ones.

VERDICT

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Leaving aside the issue of whether it quite fits as a Smart as we’ve come to know them, the #3 is a fairly appealing-looking mid-sized EV with decent range, decent practicality, appealing pricing, and a credible driving experience (once you get to know which systems to disable).

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Between one thing and another, though, there’s an abiding sense of naivety about the car, which the #1 mirrored a few months ago, and the wider company seems to evidence in myriad ways: as if it’s doing everything for the first time, and has a litany of small mistakes to work through before it matures.

It's Geely’s way, we’re told, to develop cars much more quickly than Mercedes is used to - but that’s clearly having an impact on the usability and tuning of the multimedia software and driver-assistance tech in the finished product. And that’s not what you might expect from a car brand that, at least in a notional sense, will be 30 years old next year. 

The oddest thing of all may be that, should Smart manage to work through its teething problems and the challenges of its new corporate culture, and begin to get things right first time with more of its final execution, the kind of cars it may be making now seems anyone’s guess.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.