I'm considering buying a Smart ForTwo turbo

I'm considering buying a Smart ForTwo turbo.
I'm looking at one from 2007 onwards.
I see the going price around £2000 for one of these. Some higher mileage examples are £1500-ish.

Any advice on things I should look for or mods I can do would be appreciated.

they seem like neat little cars
I would suggest getting one after 2009 since they updated the transmission so it shifts faster than the earlier versions

go for a newer one, early models seemed to have a habit of engine failure around 60 000 km.

I'll go for a newer one, but I really want the turbo. I can stretch my budget to £2250 for a 2009 car.

I read that it's quite common on the MHD cars and the 450 pre-2007 cars.

They're RWD and lightweight.

That's all you need to get the approval of Veeky Forums's busrider army

They're shit cars. The transmission is bad and there are bigger cars that get better mpg. And they're unsafe because of g forces on the body in crashes.

I live in an area where I rarely get past 25MPH. Also, look at the crash tests on Youtube, they fare better than quite a lot of other cars.

Also, for insurance, nothing's cheaper car wise.

>they fare better than quite a lot of other cars.

that's because they're mostly using the crumple zones of other cars in an accident.

have fun colliding with a Volvo 740.

please fucking don't.

buy a smart roadster forr around 4k instead.
infinitly better

Fucking savage

I live in London. Insurance and parking is a problem.
It's between that and the Toyota IQ.
The Smart is better priced and equipped.

Why do you even need a car? Get a motorcycle or bike.

Not into bikes.
A car will be useful.

I plan to buy a Smart ForTwo Turbo and get it remapped to 115HP. Then I'll replace the two door speakers and install a double din Pionner headunit.

I sat in one the other day. They're surprisingly roomy inside and the peformance is better than other cars with similar sized engines such as the 1.2 VW Polo etc.

please do not get the turbo.. the thing is horribly thirsty for its size and power, and since you say you wont't go faster than 25mph most of the time anyways the mhd should be adequate

Smart cars are god awful worst car i have ever worked on nothing is easy or logical or well made.

I was told that the turbo engines are more durable than the MHD NA 71HP engines by a specialist. Is this true?

or one of the 3 billion blinged out crown vics in whatever urban area your hipster ass lives in.

He lives in London, they don't have Crown Victorias.

Yes, the Turbo is actually the best of the lot overall.
The diesel gets the most MPGs but insurance is double for some stupid reason.
You can get a nicely specced 58 plate Turbo for £2k.

I can't tell you much about durability, only that it's true what they say about older mhds having engine failures at around 60.000km (pre 2009 451s I think). I drove a 451 mhd for a year and always got something between 4 and 5 L/100km (47 to 58 mpg). Both parents work at mercedes so I had it as an employee leasing car. when I picked it up the guy who showed me around and explained everything told me about the turbo he drove at the time. He said that he'd need about 7L/100km (33mpg) and didn't notice much difference in terms of performance to the mhd he drove before the turbo

at stock config OP wont notice a difference between the 84HP turbo and the 71HP NA.
However OP said he'd remap which takes it up to 110HP which really transforms the car's performance.

ok, I overread the part about remapping the thing, as I was actually talking about stock config..

I can confirm that the remapped smart turbo 120ps is a lot of fun to drive. It's like driving a RWD gokart. You'll love it