2011 smart BRABUS Tailor-Made ForTwo Cabriolet Review

Custom, custom, custom. Let me say that again, custom.

18 May 2015

Custom, custom, custom. Let me say that again, custom. I'm not just ripping off a catchy EA tagline when I say "It's in the name" because it really is - the smart BRABUS Tailor-Made is tailored to you and it's likely you won't find another one on the road quite like it. So when this fortwo Cabriolet rocked up on my doorstep, I ignored the annoying lack of capitalisation on smart and fortwo and took it for a test drive.

The results? Well you can see the funky video on YouTube and in the embed above: 2011 smart BRABUS Tailor-Made ForTwo Review (phew that's a mouthful!)

Not familiar with the badge? The chaps behind smart were the same ones behind the swatch customisable watches in the 20th C. After partnering up with the big dawg Mercedes Benz, the name swatch Mercedes Art became compressed into smart. Over the years, the brand has become best known for its fortwo range which as the name suggests, allows room for 2 people side by side. It started off as more of a laughing stock and transformed into the ultimate city car - it's short, stumpiness aiding in the menace that is inner-city car parking.

Adnan's Fact Of The Day: If you’re wondering why there’s a “C” on the logo not an “S”, the translation of the logo is “C” for compact and an arrow for “forward thinking”.

So where does the bling begin? In keeping with this paragraph's apparent alliterative theme, the most noticeable upgrades are on the outside. Lush LED running lights, 12-spoke, 15" wicked wheels, BRABUS side skirt illumination (noticeable at night) and front spoiler and rear diffuser in design yellow luminous tasty trim. This smart is sassy, no doubt.

And there's a million and one interior combinations and extras you can add onto this car - ranging from leather brown steering wheel with dark stitching, leather armrest (ours came in the unknown-to-me colour "ocker") and the beautiful sounding "light package". The price for all this extra kit will probably daze you, with the green BRABUS cabriolet rooftop costing you an eye-watering £2,755! It really is less formal custom and more West Coast Customs.

But it means when you step into the cabin, it’s all quite plush. The BRABUS sports seats are comfortable, supportive to a degree (they're no bucket seats, but you'll hardly be doing bucket-seat-requiring cornering) and copious amounts of leather make this a classy and quite roomy place to be. The car’s track is 1.3 metres wide, but you wouldn’t think it, because as the name suggests, the fortwo has been made to fit two people with ease.

There's not much in the way of tech. The sat-nav/entertainment touch screen works just fine but the interfaces seem old and it's not intuitive for a newbie. Small extras like heated seats bring the interior back on track but manual temperature gauges and controls are not the one.

There's a quick test you can do to see whether someone has driven a smart before. Ask them to turn it on. No, the ignition isn't behind the windscreen wiper stalk. Instead, whack it into the centre console and the turbocharged 3 cylinder burbles into life. It’s also where things start to become not so smart...

0-60mph is a laughable 13.7 seconds. Official top speed also is a shy 90 miles per hour. Make no qualms about it, this car is slow but you should be very clear on its purpose. This car packs in 71bhp and outputs only 100g/km of CO2 (a figure which I think Daimler could have done better with), but it's meant to be an easy-to-drive car if you want to pop to the shops, not if you want to pop down to Silverstone for some testing.

The steering feel was very evidently electronically assisted. At low speeds, it's nice and light allowing for easy manoeuvring and drop-dead easy parking. At just under 2.7 metres in length that was hardly the surprise of the test. What was nice was the way the steering added weight with speed. It meant motorway cruising wasn't death by driving and the car acted responsibly. The suspension on the other hand had a hard job on its hands. The fact that the wheelbase is a minute 1867 millimetres and that the wheels at the front are small 4.5 J x 15 compounds the irregularities you often find driving in Surrey and Greater London.

If you hit a bump, you will be thrown up in the air. And the whole car will sink into a pothole so dodging these is vitally important if you want to keep your spine intact.

Another pain in the derriere is the transmission. It’s an automated manual, but gearchanges are so slow that you can feel yourself aging. Power, power, power, count to 5 as the engine changes gear, power, power, power. And there's really no way to eradicate this. You can either let the computers shift for you, or you can knock them out via the flappy paddles. What flappy paddles on a 1-litre? I like it, it’s sporty, which makes it cool if you’re asking me. But gear changes, they're still slow. A nice overdrive feature of mashing your foot to the floor and shifting down is included, but again, no change on shifting times. It's a very disappointing aspect of the smart which I hope can be fixed with model updates.

And after talking speed, this brings me to safety. If you look at the fortwo, it’s clear there’s not a lot of crumple zone - and actually your knees seem to be part of the crumple equation. But in reality, smart have developed a very safe shell named “Tridion”. Check out Fifth Gear’s crash test on YouTube to put aside your safety fears once and for all.

Aside from the agility that a car this small brings, what’s the BRABUS Tailor-Made all about? One word. Flair. And to finish off with one final party trick, being a cabriolet, this allows the driver of a smart fortwo cab to feel the wind in their hair with the push of a button. And with slightly more armwork, the roof support struts can be removed for ultimate convertible motoring. I love this about the car.

The main thing I don't love, is what forms my conclusion. Do you want the good news first or the bad? If you live in the city, and always struggling to find parking space, no problem, the fortwo starts at a reasonable 11 and a half thousand pounds. That was the good news. The bad? With all the tech, the flair, the convertible roof, this smart BRABUS Tailor-Made car will cost you £27,151. That's a hella lot of money for pure personalisation. I like the smart fortwo, but I'm just not sure all the customisations warrant that last figure.