You knew it was coming — we have another new car in the TFL fleet! This time, it’s a 2015 Smart ForTwo Electric Drive. We bought this car from a dealership in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as we were looking for one of the few affordable, rear-wheel drive electric cars around.
When most folks look at electric cars, they think in terms of a commuter car or city runabout. That’s especially true with the Smart, which has an official ranges of just 68 miles. You can hardly commute from our offices in Boulder, Colorado to Denver and back on that figure, let alone dare to take a Smart out into the wilds beyond the city streets. So when we say we’re going to take this Smart and lift it, a reasonable response would be that we’re nuts.
That’s probably true, but there is at least some method to the madness. Believe it or not, you can actually buy an inexpensive lift kit from Daystar Suspension Parts for the Smart, which will give the car a 2-inch lift over the stock ride height. From there, we can put chunky off-road tires (at least for a Smart) on there, and even a snorkel — just for fun.
Now, Tommy wants to call this Smart ForTwo “the lemon” for obvious reasons. But on the 1,200-mile trip back to Colorado, we’re going to figure out a name for this series (more on that to come), and plan to take this car up the world’s toughest EV test: the Loveland Trials.
If you have any cool ideas for the Smart off-roader, let us know in the comments. Stay tuned for more coming very soon as we build the world’s first Smart electric off-roader!
