The Smart Crossblade Is a Truly Insane Car You Didn't Know Existed

this is a smart crossblade and it's truly insane it's just like the Smart car that you know except without a roof or doors or a windshield and this isn't some aftermarket conversion this was made this way by smart from the factory it is truly the weirdest smart car ever and today I'm going to review it before I get started big news this smart crossblade is currently for sale being auctioned live on cars and bids which is my Enthusiast car auction website it's being offered by the Peterson Museum here in Los Angeles they've had it in their collection for quite a while and now they're letting it go and it can be yours so once you finish watching this video click the link in the description below to head over to cars and bids where you can bid on this smart crossblade and buy it only on cars and bids so let's talk crossblade this came out in the early 2000s before the Smart car was ever sold here in North America so this wasn't sold in the United States now apparently smart made 2 000 of these for the entire world though I personally can't believe the number was that high because well it's not very practical as you can see now the crossblade had extra power over the standard smart car and of course it's filled with weird and today I'll show you everything first I'll take you on a thorough tour of the smart crossblade and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then I'll get it out on the road and drive it and then I'll give it a Doug score all right I'm gonna start the quicks end features the smart crossblade with getting in and that is where the weirdness begins because as you can see there are no doors in this vehicle but there are these large bars going down the entire side of the crossblade that basically function like doors to open them and get inside there's a little latch underneath the bar at the front part near the rear view mirror you reach under there you pull it and then you open the bar upwards and it moves out of the way and then you can climb into the car then as you can see the bar stays put because of this hydraulic which is exposed always when the bar is open or closed it's always just sitting there and that keeps it up so you can climb in and out when you have your door bar open in the crossblade by the way when the door bars are open you can see the door latch underneath which looks absolutely terrified also one other absolutely bizarre point I want to mention before I climb inside this vehicle does have a traditional smart key flip it over and you can see buttons for Central locking power locks even though this has no doors or roof or windshield it turns out the locks only actually control the trunk the cargo area which I will get to in a minute it's kind of strange to see power locks for just one opening panel but kind of strange is the theme of the crossblade but anyway next we climb inside the crossblade and that's where the Quirk Madness really starts to intensify in here now first thing to mention is that all of the interior materials are waterproof which is important because there's no roof and I don't mean this is a convertible and the roof isn't on or it's difficult to install I mean there's no roof it wasn't offered with one it doesn't come with one you can't get a roof it's fully open all the time so waterproof materials are nice and you can see for instance the seats they're not cloth or leather but instead this hearty vinyl which will stand up better to water or elements in case you're driving around in your crossblade and a freak rainstorm shows up you can see that same vinyl material on the dashboard that same red vinyl goes over most of the top of the dashboard again chosen because it won't be damaged in case water gets on it which it surely will and the rest of this interior is pretty much just plastic there's no like ultra high quality luxury touches in here that would get ruined if they get wet instead it's all just plastic to make sure it doesn't get damaged in the rain that even includes the foot Wells you can see driver and passenger foot well there's no carpeting in here there's no floor mats instead it's just simple plastic to avoid typical carpeting getting ruined if you're in a rainstorm and your ruthless vehicle now as you might imagine in this rather impractical vehicle interior storage isn't exactly a strong suit because you don't have any doors for any door pocket storage areas and you also don't have a glove box in here you can see the glove box area is primarily taken up by the airbag over on the passenger side but there are a couple of interesting storage options including under the driver's seat this little fold out tray pulls out and reveals a fairly decent storage area I guess where you can stick like paperwork that you would normally keep in your glove box now another clever storage solution is at the base of the center console where this little panel hidden pulls out to reveal an ashtray so you have this little pull out ashtray that's kind of a quirky thing and you can stick it back when you're not using it but that's most of the storage in this interior there's really not much else although you do have three smart logos vertically positioned below the center console in case that's any consolation we're not having enough storage it should be noted however you do have a little storage behind this seats depending on where they're positioned if you're a shorter driver and the seat is further up you could probably stick some stuff behind the seats and get a little extra storage in here now in terms of compromised practicality in this car another good example of that is in the passenger footwell you can see it's not very big at all most of it is taken up by this angled panel which really steals a lot of leg room from the passenger so why is that there the answer is that's where the battery lives you pull this panel off and you can see underneath that's your battery in the crossblade extremely tiny car packaging and spaces at a premium so that's where they had to stick it if you're a passenger that means you're going to be less comfortable now another interesting Quirk of the smart cross blade you look around this dashboard around this interior and you don't see climate vents so you're probably thinking that there's no climate control which would make sense because this vehicle doesn't have a roof so how effective can climate control really be well you would be wrong with that thought because there is climate control the vents are located underneath the dashboard board and when you turn this little dial in the center it turns up the fan speed and you can feel air coming out of those climate Vents and blowing like on your knees and your shin and you can control the temperature of the air up here at the top of the center control stack from Blue to Red obviously cold to hot and that's how you adjust the climate control in the Super Cross plane now other cars have more climate controls than just air temperature and fan speed but when you really think about it you don't need those other controls in the crossblade for instance no windshield defogger is needed because this car doesn't have a windshield no rear window defroster is necessary because this car doesn't have a rear window to defrost you don't need any of that crap instead all you need is some air that blows on your shins which this provides now since we're talking about the center control stack in this car how about the radio which is mounted here and looks kind of cute this sort of rounded radio that you can use to play your Tunes in the crossblade now above that in the center control stack you have this little area which looks like a robot you can see his two eyes and his big mouth and I'm not exactly sure what any of this is supposed to do it doesn't look functional at all including a little storage area here where stuff will surely fall out from but you do have this little robot looking panel on the top of your Center control stack but anyway next up in this interior also in the center moving between the seats you can see the gear selector like other smart models this uses a six-speed automatic transmission but it's actually a semi-automatic it's like a sequential manual which means there's not a traditional prnd like you would see in most automatics instead you start this car in neutral and then reverse is down if you want to go into reverse or if you want to go forward you move the shift lever over to the left and then from there you can shift gears you can see it says plus minus obviously up shift or downshift or there's an automatic mode if you would prefer the car do the work it self now when you go to turn off the car and you park it in neutral there's no parking gear because it's a sequential manual instead of a traditional automatic and that means you have to pull the parking brake in order to make sure it doesn't roll away but anyway next up next interesting quirk in the crossblade is the gauge cluster which you can see is just one analog gauge the speedometer there's no tachometer in this car below that you have a little screen that shows you a few important items like your fuel level your temperature and your odometer in this case 25 000 kilometers I can't believe somebody drove this thing 25 000 kilometers it seems ridiculous but anyway also in this gauge cluster you have your little warning lights which are also arranged in this Arc pattern sort of at the base of the arc on either side of the bottom of the speedometer and then of course you have that speedometer itself which goes up to 140 in this thing except that's kilometers per hour which translates to about 87 miles per hour frankly even 87 feels pretty terrifying it's difficult but at least you can't be thinking you're going 140. and next up another interesting interior quirk in the crossblade is how you adjust the mirrors they're not power mirrors of course they're manually adjusted but the control for them is hidden under the door bar this little switch sticking under the door bar is the mirror control to adjust the mirror you just move the switch in whichever direction you want the mirror to move and it moves correspondingly and so that's your mirror control interestingly easily accessible from the outside of the Cross blade as well meaning if you ever see one of these parked on the street you can just reach under the door bar and move the mirrors anyway next up still more quirks in this interior let's talk cup holders you have two of them and they are mounted in a rather odd spot which is sort of at the top of the dashboard you can see one over on the driver's side and one over here on the passenger side and that's where you stick your cups in the crossblade and as a result if you have a tall Cup in there it might actually go above the windshield line which is unusual for a cup holder also in this vicinity you can see the speakers up here I believe there are four speakers two are mounted sort of facing the interior on this panel that goes across the base of these so-called windshield and the other two are in this dashboard storage tray area and to me it looks like those are the only speakers in this car you can't get any in the door panels because there are no doors and I looked around everywhere else and didn't find any others so it looks like four speakers all in front of you between you and the open World also up here on the dashboard you can see a little plaque that says crossblade with a side profile image of the crossblade and then a serial number this is crossblade number 736 now smart claimed when they came out with this car in about 2002 that they were going to build 2 000 units of the crossblade but I personally don't think they've made that many for a couple reasons for one these things are just not around they were never sold in the United States but even in Europe they're tremendously difficult to find which to me suggests they didn't quite get to that 2000 number I also think 2000 was optimistic because this car is ridiculous it has no roof no windshield no doors how could you possibly find 2 000 people interested in bye so let's discuss that impracticality for a second and let's talk about exactly what it is that's going on with this car first off no windshield I've said several times in this video this car doesn't have a windshield but that is actually not fair to the crossblade it does have a windshield and it is precisely four inches high thus providing no actual shielding from the wind but it's there no doors indeed it just has the bars no rear window like I showed you before you can stick your hand right through it and no roof again not available not offer doesn't exist the car is just completely open and so you're probably wondering who was supposed to buy this vehicle it seems odd although I think the purpose for it was to be in like a Beach Community for like short drives from your house into town or from your yacht to a restaurant or something like that low speed trips where you want to enjoy the summer weather in Saint Tropez or Monaco or Greek Islands and that was the purpose of this car at least as far as I can tell now whether there were 2 000 people who thought the same and actually wanted it well I'm not so sure but anyway on to the rest of the quirks of this very crooky car starting with the front panel situation now smart cars are rear engine I'll get to all that in a minute but because it's rear engine it's no real surprise that this front panel doesn't open it's fixed in place since it doesn't have to open up to be a hood to reveal the engine but there is a front panel in this car that does open and that would be the windshield panel that it's on there are nine different Fasteners around the bottom of the windshield but only three of them are actually functional screws the other six I guess are there for style or something but anyway you loosen the three that are actual screws you unscrew each of them come out pretty easily and then you've unlatched the windshield panel and from there you can lift it up in order to reveal a few mechanical components underneath mainly fluids you can add some fluids under here this is access to the cooling system that sort of thing and that is your front hood the smart cross Blade the fact that your windshield lifts up after unscrewing a few screws but anyway next up onto the engine and the muscular smart crossblade but first we have to discuss the cargo area because in order to access the engine you must first access the cargo area now in order to do that this rear panel folds down you just stick your hand in here above the license plate and then the panel comes down and reveals the cargo area which is actually reasonably big given the tiny size of this car and its complete lack of practicality if you won't be able to get like a set of golf clubs back here but you can get some stuff in this cargo area which makes it a little bit practical but anyway in order to access the engine you lift up this little Loop in the cargo area and you can see this is your engine cover your actual hood in the Smart Car you undo this little Fastener keeping it in place and then lift it up and reveal the engine the smart crossblades powertrain all of 600 cc's from three cylinders this is a 0.6 liter three-cylinder engine you can see it says on it engineered by Mercedes-Benz in order to give this car a little bit of extra credibility for anybody who thought it wasn't a high quality and Powerful engine but let's talk about that power for the second the regular smart car from this era the smart 4-2 they officially called it had about 60 horsepower this the crossblade has been tuned by Brabus the famous Mercedes-Benz tuner in order to give it more power and it ended up with all of 70 horsepower so the regular smart had 60 this had 70 which allows crossblade owners to really take on the drag erasers at stop lights although actually it is worth pointing out this car being so small and with so much stuff removed from it it only weighed about sixteen hundred pounds so even then 70 horsepower is not a lot for like real performance but it's not like you needed a lot of engine power to get this thing moving it was really small and really light by the way one other interesting item worth noting about this cargo area on the inside of the tailgate this plastic panel you can see two like little red buttons on either side if you push those buttons this plastic panel actually opens up and reveals an additional storage area which adds more practicality now there's a diagram in here that shows what this storage area is for and it looks like it was something for these smart convertible models like some panel could fit into this spot so you didn't have to stick it in the cargo area but obviously the crossblade doesn't have that panel or any convertible roof at all so in the car crossblade it's just extra storage which is nice because it's dry storage won't get rained on which is nice to have for a vehicle with no roof but anyway next we move on to some other upgrades to the Cross blade over the standard smart car and one related to the wheels and tires these tires are wider than what you got on the regular smart car which only makes sense you needed more rubber in order to put down those extra 10 horsepower that the Brabus tune was giving you actually I'm not really sure how much they helped but the top speed of this car is said to be 84 miles an hour so almost matching the top of the speedometer and pretty crazy to imagine going that fast in this car now also related to the tires and wheels is the wheels themselves which have a distinctive design compared to the regular smart you can see three spoke wheels which were intended to give it sort of a bolder more exciting appearance to go along with the craziness of this vehicle in general and if you look closely you'll see there's only three lug nuts a three lug wheel you don't see that too often but all smart cars from this era had a three lug wheel it was just a tiny car with a tiny wheel and I guess they figured it didn't need more than that but in addition to different wheels and tires and a little extra power compared to the standard smart car there were other changes made to the crossblade as well of course no roof and no windshield and no doors but beyond those other stylistic changes on the outside for instance the front end had a completely different front bumper in the cross blade and a different front wheel Arch so it actually leaves the tires a little exposed in the front there's a little gap between the bumper and the wheel Arch which was totally distinctive from the standard smart car which didn't have that at the time also another change to the crossblade on the outside is this bulge coming over the rear wheels the regular smart car did also have a little panel here but in the cross blade it's more bulgy and muscular I guess to emphasize the sportiness of this vehicle one interesting thing about this bulge I like how it comes to a complete abrupt end in the rear of the car in order to make room for the tailgate to lower it has no like stylistic gradual ending like it probably should in order to really look great but that's kind of what happens sometimes on low volume low production cars you make a little change like this and it's not really worth reworking the whole thing in order to make the design completely make sense and speaking of not really making sense in this design how about the fuel door situation you can see the fuel door is over on the passenger side you open it up and that's where you put in fuel pretty standard but over on the driver's side there's also a fuel door it does nothing it's a complete dummy you can't open it you can't get in it you can't do anything with it it's just there for symmetry you have one on one side so you have one on the other side too I guess that was their thought and one other important item worth noting in the crossblade is the roll hoop around back this car doesn't have any glass doesn't really seem to have much protection but this roll hoop is important for safety if you'll roll over your smart car you got to have something that can supply support the weight of the vehicle that's above your heads and convertibles have to have that it's mandated by governments in most markets and so the crossblade does too this roll hoop going above the headrest adds a little safety and just a little bit of practicality and rationality to this otherwise absolutely insane vehicle and so those are the quirks and features of the very quirky smart crossblade now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the cross plane well I have to admit and I'm embarrassed to say this but I already love this thing it is unbelievably open I've been in a lot of convertibles and driven a lot of different vehicles but this is the most exposed I have ever felt even more than the Ferrari Monza which also doesn't have a windshield that is totally open this the world is just around you and now I hate to say this but I'm kind of start to get it yeah if you lived in a little Beach town and the speeds were never more than 30 miles an hour um in the south of France or the Italian Riviera yeah why not sure this would work you just drive small distances to local restaurants and shops to do a little grocery shopping a little grocery shopping and that's you get to enjoy the summer day so much more than in any other vehicle you know I drive a convertible SUV around beach towns My Land Rover in Southern California on the east coast and it's great but this is better it's so open and so Airy and so wonderful I love it now I'm noticing a drawback as I get about 30 40 miles an hour which is there becomes some wind so the issue is you kind of need either a helmet or something to deflect wind in a lot of cars that would be referred to as a windshield of course but not in this one and so that makes it a little bit challenging if you plan to go high speeds you know the top speed is 80. you'd have to have a helmet I mean I can't imagine doing that it really is a car for like low speed cruising to enjoy the day to its absolute fullest and I gotta be honest it's a beautiful day and I'm here for it I love this thing but I could see how it would be compromised in pretty much any actual situation now one other compromise that I'm realizing now but didn't when I was filming there's is no rear view mirror in the center so so you have rear view mirrors on the sides and they're useful but there's I you have to turn around which is not ideal you know that's not what you're really looking for this is fun this is seriously a legitimately fun I love this thing what a stupid and ridiculous car I do I really can't believe they made it I think it's absolutely insane that this actually became a production vehicle but I could totally see the use case for a very very small sliver of the population and my guess is it didn't cost smart that much to make this car a lot of the panels are the same obviously the basic structure is the same all they really did was pull off some stuff that cost them money and they got this and so I think that you know you could see if they sold 2000 of them they probably did make money on the project and some wealthy buyers showed up for the brand now I gotta say it isn't fast I'm flooring it right now oh my it is really not fast and everybody complains about the transmissions in the original smart cars not that they broke but that they were really slow to shift it was this early sequential manual transmission that was what they had to do to get it to fit properly and it was just not good and I can see that here the hesitation is absolutely significant now I can shift gears myself which makes things a little bit better it actually makes things quite a bit better in terms of off the line power but the gear changes are still like okay here upshift Stay Stay okay now it's got a gear that's really not an ideal situation honestly though this is gonna sound ridiculous but I think that's the biggest drawback to this car not the fact that it doesn't have a windshield or a roof or doors because I think if you used it for its intended purpose it would be fun like really fun in a way that other cars will never ever be and it's not some janky aftermarket kit car stupid thing like this is a real car that stuff's been tested that it works well the door bars are actually they're always going to fall into the right place you know you drive some of these conversions aftermarket and they're just stupid this isn't that this is like seems to be well put together of course I say that and at the same time I have to put my stuff on the floor on the passenger side because if I put it in the seat it might roll off and roll out the car but I think this thing is cool and I think if you're in the incredibly tiny sliver of the population who could use this car not only does it make sense but it's the coolest damn thing in the world and I love it I just really it's so stupid but I love weird cars and this is a weird car and so that's the smart crossblade an absolutely bizarre footnote in the history of the Smart car and a vehicle where you're unlikely to find another or frankly anything that's even close but you can find this one on cars and bids anyway now it's time to give the crossblade a Doug store and the Doug score is here 39 out of 100 which places the crossblade here against some other highly weird cars I've reviewed ultimately the crossblade is incredibly compromised and designed for a very specific person but I could totally say how it'd be fun or at least hilarious to ride around in at low speeds and beautiful weather it's insane to me this car was ever made and I got to live out a quirky car life dream by spending the day in it frankly I kind of want it but only kind of [Music] this is a smart crossblade and it's truly insane oh

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,686,409

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Id: JnL19B4OobE

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022