There is a problem with driving a Ferrari… the problem is getting back into a “normal” car. Where has the power gone from under your foot, and what happened to the glorious engine note at you hit 7000 rpm? This is especially bad if a) you only really take the Ferrari out at weekends when the weather is dry (thus for UK owners ruling out most of the calendar year), and b) your everyday, practical car may well be Italian, but it runs out of steam at 4000 rpm and seems to have about a tenth of the power, as in the case of my trusty MkII Fiat Punto 1.2L.
To solve the above I could drive the Ferrari Mondial all year round, but that would work out too expensive in terms of petrol (not to mention destroying the planet in the process), extra insurance, miles on the clock, wear from the elements, etc, and to be honest I don’t fancy some old lady reversing into the Mondial in the car park at Tesco. Clearly a bad idea all round, unless you are stupidly rich.
So my solution was to sell my Punto and buy something small, fun, economical and kind to the environment, but a car that still looks good and kicks ass! No not a G-Wiz, but a Smart Roadster Coupe Brabus: 698cc, turbo charged, 101bhp in a 750kg car… so about 130bhp/ton compared to my old Punto 60bhp/ton and Mondial with around 170bhp/ton (not bad!), 6 speed flappy paddle gearbox (so I can at least pretend I’m in a tiptronic Ferrari), traction control (including Formula one style start option), electronic stability program (ESP), 17in Brabus alloy wheels (bigger than the alloy wheels on the Mondial!), driver / passenger/ side airbags, ABS, and fully convertible via the simple push of a button on the dashboard, which is very cool to do at traffic lights. On the downside there are obviously only two seats and not much luggage space, but it’s a roadster after all 
The Smart Roadster Brabus is very low and has a stiff suspension, it really hugs the bends, I’d love to take it to a track and turn the ESP off, see whether it was my clearly superb driving skills keeping me glued to the road, or whether it was the ESP computer (yeah ok it’s probably the damn computer!). Also with the ride being so low you get a much elevated sense of speed, doing 70mph on the motorway seems like 140mph, then you can always slide the roof down, at which point it feels like the 200mph barrier has just been broken (ignoring the fact that there are probably three wheeled Robin Reliants overtaking in the outside lane). But don’t get me wrong, it IS a nippy car, top speed 125mph, when the turbo kicks in it surges impressively.
The only problem with rapid acceleration is the well documented semi automatic, sequential gearbox. There are six forward gears, and the lower four gears are very close together, so to get from 0-60mph you have to change at least three times, unfortunately the gear change speed is way off the 100ms of a Ferrari, it’s more like 1000ms (yes, it must be getting on for a second by my estimation), so changing gear three times when going for a 0-60mph run will instantly add at least 3 seconds to the overall time, explaining why the official 0-60mph time for the car is 9.5secs! Apparently you can have the ECU re-programmed for faster gear changes, it might be something worth investigating.
So all hail the Smart Roadster, and FourTwos as I like them too, just a shame they stopped making the Roadster as I think it’s one of the best designed, economical and fun cars of recent years. Even Jeremy Clarkson liked the Roadster, and it was voted the Top Gear most fun car of the year 2005, beating the grotesque Mini Cooper. Gordon Murray (designer of the McLaren F1 Supercar) is also a fan and an owner, there are rumours he is involved in a British consortium that have bought the rights to start production again, this time with a manual gearbox, and badging the cars with the resurrection of the classic British marque AC. Hopefully they would also ditch the awful looking three spoke alloy wheels found on the majority of standard Roadsters. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help see three spoke alloy wheels and think of a 1990s BMW with tinted windows, driven by someone who is, without doubt, a drug dealer.
