Wow, that is one crazy way to get the car :)

that made me lol.

I'd keep the citizenship though, just incase I ever wanted another Pop Joy or any other econocar.

You guys should move to WV, If you have a title and the car here then you can get it licensed. The only inspection is to make sure it has working lights/glass and a cat on the exhaust. The cat doesn't even have to work it can be a shell for all they care :)

Getting a kit car with no VIN legal takes a few more forms and not much else to get it legal.

So maybe an option would be to move here, have a car shipped here license it then move back to whatever state you want to. But then again considering this is one of the few states that pretty much leaves you alone and doesn't care what you do why would you ever want to leave :cool:

78 US MPG is achievable with my car. I know of a few US citizens who have either managed to license a CDN smart fortwo down there, or import a drivetrain and install it in a smart "glider" (car sold without a drivetrain).

The real world fuel consumption of the fortwo cdi and Lupo 3L are within 7% of each other, according to www.spritmonitor.de. I suspect the far larger number of smart cdi owners there are generally less obsessive about fuel economy than the Lupo 3L owners.

Incidentally, Canada is looking at moving to the US 25 year old import rule in lieu of the present 15 year rule. We can thank the commerical importers of Japanese Kei cars here for that. Damned left hand traffic headlights!!

I was under the opposite impression, because imle, European drivers are nuts. I remember reading a translated post about the 3L, which went on about still being able to get 50mpg at ~100mph on the autobahn.

Well what I meant is that - because the Lupo was available with either a regular TDI engine or the 3L version, and the smart fortwo only has the single cdi version, the people buying the Lupo 3L were doing so because they were committed FE fanatics. Otherwise they'd have bought the more powerful regular TDI.

smart buyers only have the one car on offer, all of which are potentially 3L cars, but I would speculate that fewer than 33% of the smart cdi owners are FE fanatics. Some - like me - enjoy the excelllent FE, but modify their cars in ways that can lower FE (wider wheels/tires, for example) and so will not go to extremes to hypermile.

One exception to that rule here is the smart car "Antoine" that has been here at GasSavers for a month or so. Its average FE is over 82 US MPG.

Whoa nelly. You're getting a bit ahead of yourself methinks. While it may be the case (who knows), w/o a detailed study of 3L and Smart CDi buyers, there's no way I can see anyone quantifying that statement. There are also plenty of other reasons why someone would buy a 3L Lupo compared to one w/ the 1.4L TDI, such as average carbon dioxide emissions (green) or average mileage over the vehicle's lifetime (cost), so making blanket statements about why owners buy cars generally isn't exactly... logical.

In any event, on the Euro combined cycle, the 3L Lupo gets 2.99l/100km, and the Smart CDi gets 3.3l/100km, so there seems to be difference of roughly 10% in FE. What you're mentioning is likely related to the traffic density in Europe, i.e. the Smart would get better city mileage than the VW, so the difference in what you've noticed on that German site is less than the difference on the Euro cycle. Otoh, I'm betting the Smart would fall behind that 10% difference as driving was more and more open rural roads and highways. It really depends on driving condition in order to determine which one would be more efficient. As for using your opinion of supposed driver motivation to normalize efficiency, well... You're reaching just a little bit. A very big little bit. ;)

Not to change the subject. But my mother told me yesterday she is thinking about a smart. She has always like small cars. She has been the proud owner of NSU, Fiat 850 Coupe, LeCar, CRX Si, and drives a two door Sentra right now. I asked her to hold off if she could and see if a clean oil burner will come to the States in two or so years. She said that was doable. As she would never by a first year model of anything. :)

Well I didn't realise that intuition was banned here :p

Had smart offered a super-economy version of the fortwo then it'd have been subject to the same comment, on my part.

I wonder how many Lupo 3L buyers immediately went out and bought new wider wheels and tires for their cars, remapped it for more power and....well I think most people would understand what I'm on about. The regular Lupo TDI had all those things...

With respect to the actual fuel efficiency difference, spritmonitor indicates that the Lupo 3L owners average 3.84 L/100 km, whereas smart fortwo cdi owners average 4.19 L/100 km, so the Lupo 3L consumes about 8% less on average. The best Lupo 3L is 2.97 L/100 km and the best smart cdi is 2.86 L/100 km. :D FWIW.

Well, only intuition that leads to generalizations. ;)

For that matter, larger tires may not impact efficiency much in a properly designed car. :) In terms of mileage, iirc, someone driving a 1.4L TDI Lupo is averaging ~2.8l/100km (pester me to look this up because I'll probably forget), so it's more the driver than the car ime. :p Hell, hopefully I'll be at around 3l/100km in a three decade old IDI diesel. :D