ST. ROCH, P.E.I. – A bit of a push is needed to launch oneself into the passenger seat of Jarrett Martin’s Smart car.
That’s because the car is now a wintertime, off-road-kind-of-fun vehicle.
He’s retrofitted his 2005 model with aluminum skis, where the front wheels used to be, and the car gets its forward or reverse drive through a set of tracks off his old side-by-side all-terrain vehicle.
Martin purchased the car in Halifax, in early February.
“Once we got her home, I stripped her the same night so I never even drove her on the road with tires on,” he said, describing how eager he was to try out the vehicle in snow.
That opportunity came about a week later.
Martin got the idea off the internet. He later saw news coverage of a car like it in Newfoundland. As far as he knows, it’s the only such Smart car-snowmobile combo on P.E.I.
Of course, it comes with a few perks that he didn’t have with a four-wheeler or his old side-by-side – like a heater, windshield wipers, rear window wiper and power windows.
“A Smart car is pretty much the only car you can buy (with) rear-wheel drive for the size of it, for going through trails,” the 27-year-old farmer from St. Roch.
His wife, Janel, accompanied him on a recent pig roast cross-country run and she said the Smart sled stood out.
“Everybody was going by with their cameras, laughing and taking pictures,” she said, adding someone was sending photos of the car to relatives in Florida.
She uses one word to describe the experience of sledding in a Smart car: “Warm”.
“You know, you’ve got a CD player and you’ve got seatbelts, a heater. What else would you need?”
While she agreed her husband’s side-by-side would’ve been more rugged, she characterized the Smart car snow ride as luxurious.
Martin said his uncle, Edward Martin at Martin’s Machine Shop, built the skis to fit the front hubs and Scott Profit, who builds RubiTracks for off-roading, built the spacers for the back wheels to convert from the three-hole pattern on the hubs to the four-hole pattern on the old side-by-side’s tracks.
The spacers also served to set the tracks out farther so that they wouldn’t come in contact with the undercarriage of the car.
The conversion from wheels to skis and tracks raises the Smart car about 25 centimetres. Once the snow goes, the winter apparel will be removed, and the calipers and wheels will be put back on.
Janel said she’s looking forward to that experience, too, “because I’ve never been in a Smart car.”
At least not one with wheels.
Running the car on tracks takes more power and the gearing ratio is different. When the car on tracks is registering 75 km/h, Jarrett said he’s probably only doing about 50 km/h.
“It thinks it’s going faster but you’re actually going slower.”
The skis and tracks add close to 200 pounds, or nearly 20 per cent, to the total weight of the Smart car.
After about 200 kilometres, he’s been stuck once. There’s a tow hook in the front bumper so it’s an easy rescue for a tracked ATV or side-by-side, he said.
“In good going, it shifts good, but if you’re in sticky, heavy snow, it’s going to shift harder.”
On a cross country run through soft snow with a reporter in the passenger seat, the car seemed to glide along well. In fact, in getting out to shoot photos and video, the reporter sank deeper in the snow than the car, making for an even stronger power push to get back inside. The car will run in reverse, too, but only until the front skis start digging in.
Jarrett figures he has another month's worth of snow-driving to do with the car before the skis and tracks get stored away until the next winter.
