Limo is super-smart

6:55am Friday 2nd May 2008

THERE will soon be a very unique sight on Britain's roads - a stretched Smart car.

It's the latest in a series of bespoke stretch vehicles from coachbuild converter Carbonyte, which is based close to Bournemouth Airport in Dorset.

The firm has already stretched Ferraris and Range Rovers, and done many specialist conversions to turn a motoring dream into reality.

With the Smart, though, there's none of the weight, or thirst, usually associated with stretch limousines.

The car's fairly featherweight carbon footprint remains intact, and the 17-footer will still employ the Smart Fortwo's original 600cc engine.

Carbonyte UK's latest canny conversion claims to be the world's only stretched Smart car, which it labels the Smaaart.

The Carbonyte team, led by managing director and ex-McLaren man Chris Wright, took a standard Mercedes-Benz Smart Fortwo and stretched its chassis by 2,700mm, to create a 17-feet long vehicle (5,100 mm).

Despite growing to more than twice its normal length of 2,695mm, the Smaaart's new lightweight alloy chassis allows the vehicle to be powered by the 600cc engine, and still comfortably reach motorway speeds. In all, the build process took 300 man hours, spread over four weeks, from the initial chassis cut to the final paintwork.

The prototype Carbonyte Smaaart has initially been designed as a promotional vehicle, featuring a scaled-down (20:1) fibreglass replica soft drinks can, complete with ring-pull, which serves as van-like storage space for promotional items.

But the Smaaart can be liveried to any design choice, and hired on a daily basis - or bespoke vehicles can be manufactured for individual clients to lease or purchase outright. The projected conversion cost is about £25,000, and Wright says it is possible to insert almost any design theme in the Smaaart's centre. "We think the Smaaart will make a great promotional vehicle - it combines head-turning looks with the practicality of a van.

"We've already had incredible reactions on the road - the vehicle has stopped traffic. In fact, it was the same reaction we had with the stretched Ferrari," he says.

Carbonyte is also looking to take the Smaaart into the funeral industry, by using the latest electric technology to produce an individual, yet environmentally-friendly, hearse.

Paul Spurling, Carbonyte's senior technician, was responsible for cutting the Smart into two on the firm's custom-built car alignment system that allows both parts of the split vehicle to be accurately rebuilt into one car. He said: "This little car took a lot of effort to cut, as it is so well-built and very strong, which took us all by surprise - particularly as it looked so tiny on the alignment jig compared to the four-wheel drive vehicles we usually stretch."

For more information on the Carbonyte Smaaart, visit www.carbonyte.co.uk That Ferrari conversion, by the way, saw an F1 360 Modena stretched into a 20 feet-long vehicle that can seat eight people. Among its many equally unique features were an all-carbon-fibre passenger cockpit, and nine feet-wide hydraulically-powered gull-wing doors. Finally, if you didn't already know, Carbonyte UK is the pioneer of the HotFusion composite manufacturing technology that was used on the construction of the McLaren SLR supercar's carbon body.

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