I’m posting a few links below which will take you to the facebook page and related news stories about the smart car expedition that has just about finished, a Mercedes-Benz Canada initiative for the smart fortwo involving 12 days, 3 legs, 7 smart fortwos, 3 support vehicles and 34 journalists…

First off, here is the facebook page. Tonnes of pictures, links to news stories, and even a few videos. Here is a direct link to the Inuvik pictures.

Here’s a well written news story from the Winnipeg Free Press. Paul Williamson provides a great recounting of how this project came together, including his own skepticism.

The cars that went on this Arctic trip are all standard equipment passion coupe models fitted with Continental Snow Tires. This model is referred to in the enthusiast circles as model ‘451′, which is a designation within the VIN # of each vehicle. This model has a 3 cylinder 1-litre gasoline engine, which is different than the first smart cars that Canada had in 2005 and 2006, which were equipped with an 800 cc 3 cylinder turbo-diesel. (I took one of the diesels across all 10 Canadian provinces and back in 2005. You can read about that here.)

I’ll post a few more items on this trip in th next day or two. I’m not expecting the fuel economy to be stellar per se, and though it certainly won’t be 100 mpg like I can get in a scangauge equipped diesel smart, it will probably still be pretty decent considering the extreme temperatures and road conditions.