The Smart Fortwo is not usually a car that Americans think of fondly. Most Americans didn’t really see the point in buying a two-seat city car with a controversial transmission. But I think I found a Smart that a whole lot of people would want to play around with. This 2016 Smart Fortwo sports the entire drivetrain from a 2012 Suzuki GSX 1300R Hayabusa. That means a whopping 194 horsepower, or well more than double the 89 ponies that this car shipped with when new. It’s also only $5,000, which is almost “screw it” money. There’s a reason why it’s so cheap, but you might want this so much you might not care.
The Smart Fortwo left the American market in 2019 not with a bang, but with a whimper. Smart was successful in America for only a year, 2008, and all sorts of efforts were tried to pump up sales that ultimately faltered. In fairness to the little car, nearly every other city car eventually failed in America, too. Have you checked the sales of the Fiat 500e, lately? They’re pretty sad.
One complaint from reviewers and the buying public was that the American market Smarts were slow. I mean, until 2016, they were measurably slower than a Toyota Prius. But our friends in Europe had already figured out the solution to that. If you strap a high-powered motorcycle engine into a Smart, you can get a car that burns rubber, does Cheerios instead of donuts, and goes fast enough to make your heart skip a beat. Just watch this:
Smart Hayabusa conversions are pretty rare in America, so my heart stopped when I opened up Facebook and saw this little 2016 for sale. It’s an honest “Smartbusa” or “Smartuki” conversion, and I almost bought it the second I saw the listing.
A Weird Marriage
The idea of boosting a Smart with a motorcycle engine is actually old news. Skip across the Atlantic, and you’ll find that Europeans have been obsessed with making Smarts faster since the early 2000s.
One of the early companies to embark on the challenge of making a motorcycle-powered Smart was Z Cars LTD. in the United Kingdom. Z Cars was the workshop of grass-track racer Chris Allanson, and his whole deal was mounting bike engines in Minis and kit cars. Chris would branch out into Smarts at the request of Pete Ballantine, who wanted to soup up his MCC Smart City Coupe (the Fortwo’s former name). The moto-engine Smart project was such a smashing success that Chris put a kit into production and distributed it under Smarts-R-Us, which was then a premier Smart tuner.
The “Evil Twin Z Cars,” as they were called, featured the heart from a Suzuki GSX-R1000. This engine was cranked up to 180 HP, and Z Cars promised a 60 mph acceleration in under six seconds and a top speed of 120 mph. In those days, a stock gasoline-powered Smart took as long as 15 seconds to reach 60 mph, so the gains advertised by Z Cars were insane.
The Evil Twin Z Cars featured the bike engine and transmission built into its own custom-fabricated engine cradle and subframe. When installed, the Smart looked stock. But the cars weren’t great at hiding their firepower, as it’s hard to miss the sound of a sportbike emanating from a car. The neat part was that, because the Smart Roadster used the Smart Fortwo’s platform, the Evil Twin kit was available for Smart’s short-lived sports car, too. Z Cars even figured out the problem with the donor motorcycle drivetrain not having a reverse gear, and designed a reverse gear just for the kit.
It’s unclear if Z Cars invented the motorcycle-powered Smart, but it certainly was one of the major players in popularizing the concept. Soon enough, all sorts of these projects appeared all over the web.
The addiction even reached America. Smart launched in America in 2008, and it was only a year later when Michigan-based fabricator Matt Boesch turned a Fortwo into a pocket rocket with a bike engine kit. Boesch planned to sell a kit, too, but sadly, his plan didn’t work out, and he built only one car, the iconic SmartBusa.
To my knowledge, there’s only one company in America that sells a Smart Hayabusa kit, Sinister Sand Sports, and that company’s kit will cost you $22,999 for most of the major parts that you’ll need to create your own Smart Hayabusa. However, you’re still left with actually putting it together.
It seems that most builders just do their own concoction. That’s what you’re getting today with this build.
This Smart Hayabusa
The seller, Cole, started with an interesting donor car. The body is a 2016 Smart Fortwo Prime. I have never seen a third-generation Fortwo given a motorcycle engine treatment before. These cars tend to be more expensive than older Fortwos, and are actually decently quick from the factory thanks to their turbocharged 89 HP engines and DCTs.
This car started life as a Prime trim level. This was one of the top trim levels in America, and featured an interior with leather and heated seats. In other words, this was a really nice car to turn into a little hot rod.
I’ve been on a nationwide hunt for a Smart with a manual transmission for under $6,000. Yes, some Smarts came with an honest three-pedal manual transmission! Manual Smarts are a rare breed in America, as they were sold in only 2016 and 2017, and an overwhelming majority of buyers got the automatic. By my count, there are maybe a dozen for sale in America right now. Many of them are over $10,000, and most of the others are too expensive in my opinion. Given the time these cars have been on the market, I don’t think my analysis is that far off.
Anyway, during the weekend, I found another manual for sale, and this one was in Indiana. The twist was that this is no normal Smart, as it has the engine from a 2012 Suzuki GSX 1300R Hayabusa. I reached out to the seller before I could even catch my breath.
He told me that he custom-built the car, fabricating a custom engine cradle out of steel square tubing, and mounting up the bike’s transmission.
In our short conversation, the seller sent me this photo. It looks like his custom engine cradle is shored up using a modified version of the vehicle’s factory rear crash bar. The photos also suggest that he’s had to do a lot of cutting of the vehicle’s Tridion Safety Cell (the unibody) to fit the bike engine in there.
As for the motorcycle engine, the 2012 Suzuki GSX 1300R Hayabusa. Official specifications are as high as 194 horsepower and 115 lb-ft of torque. U.S. magazines have found that the ‘Zuki makes about 170 HP at the rear wheel. The Smart came stock with a 0.9-liter inline-three rated for 89 HP and 100 lb-ft of torque. So, the bike has double the horsepower, but not much more torque. This has been more or less the case with every Smart Hayabusa build.
One of the benefits of using a donor car from the newest Smart generation is that these newer cars are wider. A second-generation Smart — that’s 2008 to 2015 for Americans — has a track width of 50.5 inches up front and 54.5 inches in the rear. The third gens have a track width of 57.8 inches and 56.3 inches, respectively. A lot of Smart Hayabusa builders like to widen their cars by at least a few inches, and, in theory, you might get away with not doing that here.
That’s all in theory, anyway, because now I must get to the bad parts.
The Possible Downsides Of ‘Busa Conversions
The seller told me that the engine runs great and the car is stupid fun and fast. However, the engine has a knack for twisting driveshafts. I asked the seller quite bluntly if the car would make the three-hour drive from Indiana back to my home in Illinois. The seller told me, quote: “No way! I didn’t do a very good job on the drive system.” I adore brutal honesty like that. He could have just told me it’ll make it, took my money, and then let me find out for myself.
So, at minimum, you’ll have to find and rectify the problems with this build.
Then you’ll have to deal with a bunch of potential unknowns. In my experience from nearly two decades in the Smart community, one of the most common reported issues with Hayabusa builds is that these cars actually suck at doing anything other than burnouts, drifts, Cheerios, and drag races.
Some of this is because, depending on the quality of the build, you may have to slip the clutch a lot or even just dump the clutch at a high RPM in order to get the car moving without stalling. But there’s more to it, too, like the fact that the interior is going to be loud from the bike engine right behind your ears. Also, you probably are not going to have air-conditioning or heat, either. Oh, and if something breaks, you’re entirely on your own for fixing it. Here’s another glorious video from the past:
You should also consider that a 2012 Hayabusa weighs 573 pounds wet. A 2016 Smart weighs 1,984 pounds. Even when you subtract the engine, the motorcycle drivetrain has to move more than a thousand pounds more than it was designed to. The engine is up to the task, sure, but what about the rest of it? As the seller readily admitted to me, his build constantly pretzels driveshafts.
Then there’s the fact that you’ve melded a motorcycle powertrain with a car, which means that you now have a sequential transmission, and maybe no reverse gear. Of course, given the metal cut out to get everything to fit, there’s also no knowing what would happen if someone rear-ended you.
A lot of Smart builders are moving away from motorcycle engines for these reasons and more. Instead, a lot of folks are outfitting their Smarts with Honda K engines, GM Ecotec engines, and even Toyota engines. By using car engines and car transmissions, those Smarts achieve better horsepower numbers, better torque, and better drivability.
Still Fun, Probably
But for many, the Hayabusa conversion is still alluring. Honestly, it is for me, too, which is why I tried to buy this one! There’s just something that sounds so fun about a Smart that sounds like a Suzuki and spends most of its time converting tires into smoke. But, honestly, I know my limits. I don’t have the tools, the skills, or the time to reengineer someone else’s project. So, with a heavy heart, I passed on this one.
Maybe you’re crazier or better-skilled than I am. That’s why I say this thing is the best and dumbest way to spend $5,000. It’s a car that can’t even carry its own weight without nuking driveshafts, and one that the builder says isn’t even put together well enough to make a basic highway drive. That’s so bad. But it’s also so good, in a silly, sort of irresistible way. This car is sort of like the intrusive thoughts in my brain in physical form.
But I am not the buyer for this car. If you think you are, contact the seller and pick the car up in Wakarusa, Indiana. Once you sort out the driveshaft situation, please let me drive it! Otherwise, if you’re reading this and you have a wildly souped-up Smart, contact me at mercedes@theautopian.com. I want to drive it!
Good thing for the builder’s honesty. If not for that, I would be suspicious that this thing could be what is known in spycraft as a honeytrap, specifically targeted to compromise one particular automotive journalist.
I don’t have the time or the space, otherwise this would be highly tempting. Mid-engined, lightweight car that can readily destroy its tires and lose traction under hard accelerations? That is my kind of car. I’d rather have the Smart Roadster-Coupe, but still this is awesome.