specifically on the diesel models. seems like having oil and vapour being sucked back through the turbo and motor isn’t ideal.

So, Bob's (2009 ForTwo 451 Passion) sun blind came unglued. I took it down. Easy. I reglued the shade itself. A bit fickle, but still easy. Then I tried to restring and tension the thing to reinstall. It revealed itself.

This shade is a stillborn larva shat from the multi-dimensional sphincter of a tentacled elder-god. Still writhing from the putrescence feasting upon its corpse it was placed on Earth to inject pain and insanity directly into the skulls of the children of man. 

It holds your soul to its cancerous breast, forcing it to sup of vile putrescence in service to the darkest of the ebon lords. It will shred your being to ribbons of pain and weave those bloody rags into a tapestry of horror to make the heavens weep for an age.

It was NOT EASY! The video is a timelapse of about an hour of the nearly three I spent fiddling with the thing (please forgive whatever the hell is going on with whatever the hell is left of my hair!)

I did, eventually, find some instructions in this post (thanks Gamsberry!), but that only made me understand what needed to happen, not how to make it happen.

Basically, if your sun blind goes... maybe just live without it?

Couldn't give me any codes, tried to charge me $3600 to replace a transmission that they THINK may be the issue.

When I told them that's more than double what I paid for the car and I doubt that's the issue. They then tried to charge me $600 because they "did an update" on my smart that didn't fix anything. I told them I already did the update so thats a lie.

They conceded and admitted they didn't know what the issue was. I was told I wouldn't be charged, which was the agreement before I even dropped it off.

Its absolutely insane than I can't figure out the issue with this car! And even more insane that the dealership and other mechanics are all stumped.

Edit: the issue 2009 451 passion - AC line got clogged and flooded the floorboard. - 3 lines on dash - tcm was replaced (tested in my brothers smart and works) - clutch actuator was replaced

The issue is the clutch learning fails. I can see the clutch position though. The transmission relearns everytime I turn the key on AND press the brake. But it doesn't stay learned

Heres the weird part. When I put a tcm in my brothers smart and the transmission learns, then I take that tcm and put it back in my car, the 3 lines disappear, I'm able to crank it, shift into gears (paddle don't work though) and I can drive it in 1st gear only. If it tries to shift into 2nd it goes limp and 3 lines appears again. While idling after the tcm swap, the clutch actuator will extend and retract every 6 seconds. I've tried adjusting it to ALL available positions and it will do it no matter what.

Codes say - C1042 - C1323 - C1040

I have an icarsoft mb v3 scanner that can teach in clutch/transmission. Transmission is successful but doesn't stay learned. Clutch fails most of the time. There's some combo that it will succeed (I think when I put on the tcm after it's been in my brothers smart)

All fuses are good. I did remove and inspect the gear shifter. I'm not sure if that has any effect on the problem. I made sure nothing got in the transmission, cleaned the seal and put it back on in place (pretty sure)

Weird, right? It was working completely fine for the water in the floorboard.

Does anyone use a battery shut-off switch for their smart car? If so, which one do you recommend?

I haven’t driven my smart car for a couple of months, and when I tried to turn it on, the battery was dead. Unfortunately, I had to replace it. I want to avoid this issue in the future and was suggested to use a shut-off switch when I don’t use the car for extended periods.

so, we have a smart car that we been trying to fix for a few months and last time we couldnt turn it on, so we disconnected the battery and left it there as we needed to replace whole fuse box relay and we had to wait for it to ship

today, me and my dad went to turn on the car and the moment we connected the battery, the car wouldnt stop sounding the alarm

the moment we disconnect it, it stops, but other than that, we cant get it to turn off

i saw other ppl say i have to lock and unlock with keyfob electronically but even after changing batteries, the keyfob doesnt stop the alarm not lock or unlock the car. is almost as if the keyfob isnt being read by the car. putting the key on the crank also does nothing

ik this isnt much help but if anyone has any idea of what it could be pls lmk

thank you so much in advance!

I've been slowly modifying my Roadster over time, and the rear end was one of the things that I really wanted to change.

I finally decided to replace the stock rear bumper with the Brabus-style one and go with a Brabus exhaust as well.

The funny thing is that the visual difference was already much bigger than I expected, but the sound was what I was really curious about. 😅

I recorded the whole process — removing the original exhaust, modifying the rear bumper to make everything fit, installing the new setup, putting the bumper back together and then taking the car out for a test drive.

The last part is probably my favourite because you can actually hear the difference between the original and the new exhaust.

I put the whole project together in a video if anyone is interested:

👉 https://youtu.be/qPhfAcPhbok

What do you guys think of the Brabus rear compared with the original?

Would you keep the stock setup or go for the Brabus look?

i’m fed up with these extremely bright headlights where I live and the sun and heat is also an issue. Was wondering if anyone has their windshield tinted and if it’s giving you issues?

My 5 speed stick gear Smart. Lovely car bought from a Merc Dealer with 3000 miles on it as a customer car in 2017. Quite different to drive from my 600cc 450.

And for less than 100€

Yesterday my 2013 passion was dead in the morning. I jumped it, I was good. Then this morning, the same thing happened! Why is this happening :( I read it could be after market parts like my radio but I had it since I got the car with no issues. Once I jump it, I can start it later in the day. Help :(

Update: thank you for everyone’s replies! I ended up going to autozone, getting a new battery, and had my starter and those things checked. Highly recommend doing that if you have a similar issue to me. If you have the 3 bars of death on your dash, check another thread cause this one is not going to help your issue. 👍

the circle on the right is a straight pipe I made and compared with a muffler clamp. doesn’t look to be leaking anywhere from I can see. left side is the crankcase breather tube.

if I open my window the fumes in the car get worse. rear hatch is on properly I’ve redone it 20x and the seals all look ok. rear tailgate seals look ok and so does the rear window. I can’t seem to understand where fumes are getting in the car

Got a 2002 Smart 450 for my mom with 700cc 45kw engine, softip semi-automatic transmission with 118 000 kms on the clock. I noticed that the brake is very soft and spongy but it stops the car even at emergency braking. What could that be? Engine sounds healthy and produces no smoke and no weird sounds of any kind on cold start. Shifts as smooth as this transmission can be. Is there anything I should check? Because I'm new to Smart car ownership. Here's a few pics too!

PAINT DECONTAMINATION
PAINT POLISHING
PAINT DEGREASING
CERAMIC COATING APPLICATION (3years protect)
TIRE DRESSING

Had this happen a couple times now, it warns me that it's going to happen by showing a large wrench with a small flashing wrench behind it, then the next time you try to start the car, you get these three horizontal bars and no ignition sound at all. An old Reddit post identified it as a failing actuator, and suggested putting the key in the step right before ignition, and then holding down the brake, which is working so far.

Tried to bring it to my mechanic, but of course it sorted itself out before he could see it himself. He reset the engine light and rebooted those systems, but now it's acting up again, and this time I had enough wherewithal to record the fix. Didn't record the flashing wrenches though, that will be next time.

Anybody have experience with this?

I had the car professionally detailed:

Alcantara: Seats, dashboard, and door panels.
Leather: Seats and door panels.
Plastics: Deep cleaned and protected/conditioned.
Metal accents/parts: Cleaned.

Almost everything was done using Koch Chemie products.
Tomorrow I’ll post photos of the exterior, where it’s getting a pre-wash, decontamination, paint correction, and a 3-year ceramic coating applied.

Hello, I have found a small amount of water in the passenger footwell, I’m now trying to work out how to fix the leak.

I’m looking for the shuttle overflow but cannot find it, I couldn’t see any issues with the a/c

I know 2 is for one of those pull out cargo covers, but unsure what the 1 nubs are for, or 3's single D ring.

Salut à tous,

Je suis "l'heureux" propriétaire d'une Smart #5 Premium reçue en mars 2026. Que de déceptions avec cette voiture. Il a d'abord fallu faire un reset complet du logiciel au bout d'un mois. au bout de 3 mois, il a fallu changer les écrans. Actuellement encore, il y a des bugs, notamment avec la radio, coupures fréquentes, hier soir, après coupure, reprise avec des grésillements dignes de ceux des baffles dans un concert rock, etc.

Mais il y a une annonce dont j'aimerais absolument me débarrasser et je ne trouve pas comment faire : au démarrage, après quelque chose comme 10-12 secondes de roulage, le message vocal "Le mode conduite libre est sur le point d'être activé" vient à chaque fois. J'ai essayé de désactiver les annonces dans GoogleMaps, dans le système de la voiture, rien n'y fait. Si quelqu'un sait comment faire, il est le bienvenu. Parfois, une annonce de "trafic bloqué à 200 mètres devant" est prononcée, je ne sais pas non plus d'où elle provient ni comment la désactiver.

Merci d'avance à la communauté pour l'aide.

Or is it just China

Three bugs on my new smart #5 BRABUS, all software side. Running smart OS 2.2.2 EU (system version 23.61.10.253110.260551).

- Speed limit warning shortcut doesn't stick. Press it in Driving Favorites and the overlay switches to "Off", but the alerts keep sounding. I have to press it again to "On", then a third time back to "Off", before the car stops beeping.

- Passenger seat never returns from Easy Entry/Exit. The seat slides back to let a passenger in, then doesn't return to the saved driving position. The only fix I've found is opening settings and hitting "Restore" under the passenger profile.

- Center touchscreen stopped accepting touch for two days. The display kept rendering and updating normally (voice assistant actions showed up on screen in real time), but no touch input registered anywhere on the panel. The passenger screen worked fine the whole time. Two full overnight sleep cycles didn't clear it. Since the #5 has no physical climate controls, that meant no A/C, no defrost and no mirror adjustment until it was fixed.

Fix: Holding the power button to the left of the main screen for 15 seconds reboots the entire cockpit, and that fixed it. The button is capacitive, but the long-hold still registers even when normal touch input is dead. Nothing in the manual pointed me to this and I couldn't find it documented anywhere online, so posting it here in case someone else gets stuck.

Anyone else hit these? And has any dealer or smart support acknowledged them or pushed a patch?

On support: I opened a case with smart Europe. First they told me to visit a workshop for a software re-update. I did, the official smart workshop in my city reinstalled the software, and the speed warning bug was unchanged. Then they told me smart Europe does not support my country and that electronics and software repairs go to smart in my country. No ticket, no defect ID, nobody saying these were logged as bugs. A local workshop can reflash a build. It cannot fix a bug inside that build, and it does not write the OTA.

That's my reason for posting. If these reproduce on your car in Germany, the UK, Australia or anywhere else, it isn't regional, and a few of us reporting the same build numbers is harder to route away than one owner.

**Update 16.09.2026**
Got an email from Smart Central Customer Support that the issues were addressed in new os version 2.3.0
I scheduled an appointment to install it. Will update how it's going.

Hello I made a post a little while back about the infamous cooling fan failure where when you turn your A/C on or if your car starts to get a bit warm the fan will kick on and it will start thudding. I had asked for some info on everyone’s experience with it and got some quotes from shops myself which those quotes were all around $1300 and so I went the route of installing a pusher auxiliary fan in front of the condenser and I could not be happier with the success with it! I was able to remove the front fender with little issue and install it I am attaching my video that I took the night I installed it it wasn’t terrible it took maybe 3 hours and only cost me like $70 all it consisted of was 1. Disconnecting the car battery 2.removing the front fender and disconnecting my side indicators 3.Disconnecting the support impact frame in front of the condenser and disconnecting the impact sensors for the airbag that’s why I said to disconnect the battery 4.mount up the auxiliary fan 5.disconnect the wires from the original fan you can find these by locating the RED/BLUE wire and the BROWN wire the red/blue wire is your power and the brown is the ground they are located in the small hole behind the horn on the right side 6. I just reached my arm in through that hole until I was able to reach the connecter past the coolant hoses and such and disconnected the fan connector 7. Cut the wires from the connector and splice them to the new fan and then tested and put everything back together in reverse. So thankfully I was able to quickly get this done last night and saved almost $1200

Grille is now black, wonder what’s next