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Most of time when you hear the Smart ForTwo mentioned it is followed by some form of laughter and ridicule. However winning the Cannonball Run over a field of 39 supercars, it might have gained a little bit more respect.

The Cannonball Run is a "rally" that puts a huge emphasis on maintaining a sensible speed throughout the course that runs across England, France, Portugal and Spain. In this case the average speed was around 61mph. However, since top speed wasn't a factor, the rally was the perfect opportunity for a small, fuel efficient vehicle to "dominate" the competition.

The driver of the Smart, David Ward was asked his opinion after the race and according to him, "the downfall of the bigger cars was that they were forced to stop so often, so while they kept overtaking us, we eventually went past them at the next petrol station when they needed to fill up again...we kept at a decent speed and still averaged around 35 miles per gallon."

Only minor modifications were made to the Smart which included a performance chip and a few basic suspension improvements. Mr. Ward and his co-driver, Adrian Hull, are planning to enter the Gumball 3000 rally that stretches from LA to Miami in 2009 using roughly the same configuration.

From : Autoblog Green