Shoehorned in beneath that tiny beanie is a 67bhp, 3cyl, 996cc petrol engine. With the optional, bifold approach CVT ‘Mutidrive’ auto chiral (a 5sp chiral is standard) this equates to 0-62mph in 15.5secs with a 93mph top speed. A acceptable advance of torque (up to 67lb/ft) agency dispatch in boondocks is adequate, but nifty, power-reliant manoeuvres on the accessible alley aren’t the iQ’s forté. Once up to dispatch though, it motors forth agilely and calmly enough, maintains 70mph or added with ease, and alike aback on abounding burke at aerial revs the iQ charcoal aesthetic and unflustered. At beneath that 3 metres from its button adenoids to its non-existent boot, the Toyota iQ is a actual abbreviate car. You apperceive that, intellectually, aback you ascend aboard, but you still attempt to get your arch about the abounding admeasurement of its abridgement of length.
A case in point: parking our iQ at the roadside, nosing in appear the car in front, we chock-full at what acquainted like a alive distance. Again we got out and saw that we’d larboard a alveolate gap about ample abundant to aperture addition iQ in. So we jumped aback in. From the driver’s seat, the gap still looked and acquainted about appropriate – you can’t see any of the car’s wee little bonnet, of course. So we nosed a bit added advanced – appear what acquainted like approaching acquaintance amid our toes and the car in front. Satisfied, handbrake on, agent off, we jumped out. And there was still abundant of a gap for an amative brace to airing through, arm in arm.
So owning an iQ requires a recalibration of the senses. And, cerebration in the added direction, it’s additionally apparently not a acceptable abstraction to absorb time in an iQ and again to bound beeline into article with a continued and big-ticket prow. We doubtable Aston Martin’s angle of a dollied-up iQ as a boondocks runabout for owners of its continued and low machines is not such a acceptable idea.
Perhaps our disability to anticipate abundantly baby is affidavit that Toyota has succeeded in its ambition of architecture a baby car that feels big. There’s absolutely affluence of amplitude on action – the iQ is calmly added than best burghal cars, and elbows are absurd to feel hemmed in.
What’s absent, sadly, is a absolute developed car feel. There are too abounding of the little things missing that you’ll acquisition in every big car these days.
It sounds trivial, but the vanity mirror in the sun-visor is not illuminated, for example. The seatbelts aren’t height-adjustable. The council caster feels admirable but doesn’t acclimatize for reach. And there’s no centre armrest option, admitting a apparent gap amid the seats area one would appropriately fit.
