I didn’t know what to expect when I said yes to a smart Expeditions in The Distillery District. The description read as follows:
smart is presenting an urban curated ride & drive that will guide people to discover Toronto’s art/theater/music/culture in rogue areas of the city that they have yet to experience. This ‘never-been-done-before’ experience will feature live art installations, musicians, fire twirlers and additional surprises around every corner. Instead of just educating the city where they can experience this culture, we are going to show it to them LIVE via multiple vignette’s including the Distillery District, parking lots and warehouses – all from behind the wheel of a smart fortwo.
It was a very clever take on the test drive. After filling out some information and checking my driver’s license, I was sitting behind the wheel of a smart fortwo. There was a group of four cars and we followed the lead car on our adventure. We found ourselves driving to different spots around the area where we would stop for entertainment. There was the drive-thru art museum which featured little enclosures you had to drive through. Works from local artists hung on the walls of these enclosures. We then parked in front of an old building. Two parkour trained kids came out and started jumping all over the cars to music. It was pretty fun. We then drove to movie set where jazz, ping pong, fire dancers and drummers entertained us. I know, it’s a weird description so that’s why I took a video with the trusty Olympus E-PL1.
Smart Expeditions from Anita Clarke on Vimeo.
The whole experience was about 30 minutes from start to finish. It’s amazing to see smart create this whole experience for a simple test drive. The smart fortwo is a cute little car that handles nicely. I really hate the review mirror, it’s tiny. I’ve always thought of smart cars as a second car, never as a main car. It’s not practical in my mind but good for city driving. It would make a great second vehicle.
smart Expeditions is setting up locations in different parts of the city for the next few weeks in June if you want to try it yourself. They have appointments during the day and evening. Be sure to check the schedule at smartExpeditions.ca.