An awesome little engine!

Today we took a short (130 miles or so) trip in to the North Yorkshire Moors. The traffic was a little slow along the A64 between York and Malton but that gave me chance to reflect on a few more things about the car, some of which will be subjects of upcoming posts.

The reason for this post was really to say how wonderful this little 799cc diesel engine is. Once we got on to the moors we took some of the back roads down in to Gromont, then across to Goathland (where Heartbeat is filmed), then back towards Hutton-le-Hole and on to Helmsley.

If you follow this on a map it's quite a nice set of winding roads, but when you actually get there and experience it - Wow! We are talking seriously steep climbs and long steep drops. There were several 1-in-3 (33%) hill climbs and the little diesel never missed a beat. I was tremendously impressed by it's ability to pull up hills without needing to over-rev, and it easily kept up with any cars in front. In fact, a Renault Laguna was positively slow and in-the-way on one of the hills!.

I was also very impressed by the way the auto-gear box knows to change down to provide some engine breaking when descending at lower speeds. This is something I've definitely missed on my other cars with automatic gearboxes..

The short wheelbase does provide a mild aerobic workout on really bumpy sections of the road but equally excels in handling the tight bends..

After more than 500 miles in the Smart ForTwo CDI I can only wonder why we didn't buy one earlier. It's better than I ever expected it to be, and it's completely changed my perspective on driving. .

More to follow....