Despite its flaws, the Smart Roadster’s always been a very easy car to like. Low weight, a thrummy mid-mounted turbo three-pot, a superb chassis and ownership provenance in the form of McLaren F1 mastermind Gordon Murray. Were it not for the clunky semi-auto gearbox it was saddled with, and its lack of power – no more than 99bhp in the versions fettled by Mercedes tuner Brabus – it could have been even better.
The thing is, though, there was a version that fixed at least one of these issues. Kind of. In 2003, Brabus cooked up a prototype based on the funky glass-hatched Roadster Coupe that turned it from a mere mid-engined runabout into a serious sports car. It was named the Roadster V6 Bi-Turbo and, as you can probably work out, it had a twin-turbo V6.
Smart Roadster Coupe V6 Bi-Turbo – side
Not just an off-the-shelf unit, though – to create the V6 Bi-Turbo, Brabus smooshed together two of the standard Roadster’s 698cc turbocharged three-pots, mating them to a common crankshaft and creating a tiny 1.4-litre twin-turbo V6.
The resulting engine made 168bhp – still not a massive amount, even in 2003, but despite essentially having two engines, the Roadster V6 Bi-Turbo only weighed around 850kg. This gave it 198bhp per tonne – a better power-to-weight ratio than a contemporary Lotus Elise 111S.
Smart Roadster Coupe V6 Bi-Turbo – rear
The gearbox was different, too, but sadly still an automated manual, a new five-speeder derived from the manual fitted to the upcoming Smart Forfour hatch. With all these changes, 0-62mph was said to take 5.8 seconds, and top speed was up to 137mph – right up there with the cream of the sports car crop in 2003.
To cope with the newfound grunt, a bespoke rear coilover suspension setup was fitted, and the new 17-inch wheels were shod in much wider rubber. Elsewhere, the fuel tank had to be relocated to the Roadster’s modest front luggage compartment, turning it from merely very impractical to borderline unusable for anything other than short trips.
Smart Roadster Coupe V6 Bi-Turbo – interior
Inside, there were new Alcantara-clad bucket seats with four-point harnesses, bigger metal shift paddles and plenty of racy red accents. The radio and air-con, meanwhile, were done away with, presumably to keep weight down. Oh yeah, and because it was a project with a quick turnaround, there was no traction or stability control. Snappy.
What happened next isn’t clear. By all accounts, Smart and Brabus built 10 of these scaled-down supercars – indeed, a plaque on the interior confirms as much. Some sources say that each one was sold for a massive £330,000, others that that was just the first one, and the other nine went for a more palatable £75,000 (both of those numbers are in 2003 money, mind you). We’ve also seen it suggested that £330k was the cost to build, rather than sell them. Other sources still suggest that most were never sold and subsequently destroyed, and that only two or three remain.
Smart Roadster Coupe V6 Bi-Turbo – front
Whatever the truth, if you think you’ve seen one of these hopped-up Roadsters, out in the wild, you’re probably wrong. A couple of years after the V6 Bi-Turbo debuted, Smart produced a run of 50 Roadster RCR – ‘Roadster Coupe Racing’ – special editions. These shared the styling tweaks of the V6 prototype, but were mechanically based on the regular, 79bhp car (albeit with an optional power bump to 90bhp). They were a rarity in themselves, but will never come close to the actual V6 Bi-Turbo – one of the coolest sports cars that never was.
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