Smart Car turned into a snowcar

CTV Ottawa: Canada's smartest car CTV's Eric Longley takes a spin in Manotick in Canada's smartest car completely converted for off road traction.

It looks… unusual.

Tod Anderson, an Ottawa-area mechanic, has modified a 2006 Smart Car to make it, shall we say, a little more winter-friendly.

He’s removed the wheels and replaced them with snow tracks on the back, and skis on the front.

The resulting hybrid is quite possibly the cutest snowmobile on the planet.

And why would he do such a thing?

Just because.

“Yeah, it’s just a thought that came to me and it seemed like the right thing to do,” says Anderson. “The whole point of the exercise is to see if it could be done.”

Anderson operates Autobahn Tuning in Manotick in south Ottawa, specializing in repairing, restoring and modifying European cars.

He says the Smart Car was ideal for the project. It’s rear-wheel drive. And the open-ended shape of the rear wheel wells meant the snow tracks, designed for ATVs, could be attached with relative ease.

The front skis were a little trickier. Anderson designed and built them from scratch.

He estimates the modification cost him around $7,000 and about a month and a half of off-and-on tinkering in his home garage.

He finished it just before Christmas. But interest in the car has only recently snowballed after a friend, Brock Winjbeek, posted a photo on Reddit. “It’s not normal, you know?” says Winjbeek. “You don’t see it every day.”

Tod Anderson says the modified Smart Car steers surprisingly well, and can top out at close to 70 km/h. But he can only drive it on private property. The car is neither street legal nor suitable for public snowmobile trails.

Too bad. It looks ideally suited for Canada’s snowy roads.

Then again, one look at this Smart Car/snow car and we are reminded of a famous line in the movie, Back To The Future.

To quote Doc Brown, “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”