Some pundits find the car lacking in many classes. Performance is one. Scott Burgess of the Detroit News calls the ForTwo “joyless to drive.” He blames the five speed automatic transmission. He complains that it is actually a manual transmission with an electric motor that engages the clutch and shift gears. He adds that a proper clutch wasn’t used because it would have meant that the car would have to be bigger to accommodate. As a result, he says, shifting takes seconds that seem like hours. But he praises that the transmission helps with good mileage which is 33 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway.
He also complains that the ride was “loose and loud.” When he tested the vehicle it reached speeds of 80 mph but the wind noise and rattling was so bad they drowned out the stereo. Handling was a little loose at higher speeds, he says, but on city streets the car “felt nimble and precise.” The car includes an electronic stability control which, he says, worked “perfectly.”
He defends the car on the safety issue. He points out that the car features a tridion safety cell developed by Mercedes which sends the energy generated by a collision through the car’s body and around the passenger cockpit.
As for the interior, he found that there was an “impressive amount of space inside.” This due to a number of design elements including full size doors, the boxy body, and big windows. Measurement figures read like this: 15-inch wheels with the length 106.1-inches, width 61.4-inches and height 60.7-inches. He notes that the entire car can fit into the wheelbase of a Chevrolet Malibu with 6-inches of additional space left open.
He found the dashboard to be “tiny.”
There were some creature comforts including heated seats, dash mounted electric door locks and a six speaker CD stereo system.
However, the best part of driving the car, he says, is parking.
Our take? Americans are spoiled. We want our entry level cars to drive like luxury cars. And when they don’t we call them “cheap.” If there’s hamburger and steak on the menu, we are more inclined to take the steak. What we're trying to say is, Europeans are probably a little more forgiving when it comes to comfort than we are here in the states. And, you got to remember why you are buying the car. It’s not for the creature comforts.