Toyota iQ 1.0 (2009) CAR review

The new Toyota iQ is a landmark car: the world's soon-to-be-biggest car maker has gone and made the world's smallest four-seater. You see, the iQ packs two rows of pews into a tiny slip of a hatchback. It's not even three metres long. But the Toyota iQ has a twist; like Smart's Fortwo, the last car to rip up the packaging rule book, the iQ wears a distinctly premium price tag.

Think of it like house prices. Although the iQ is tiny, at just 2985mm long, it is plonked slap bang in Mayfair, carrying an estimated £10,000 price tag when UK sales start in January 2009. So it had better be good...

Ok, so the Toyota iQ is pricey, but is it good to drive?

CAR drove some of the first pre-production prototypes on the roads around Toyota's European design centre in Nice, on the south coast of France. This posed a bit of a problem; the Provençal roads might be sun-kissed and blessed with heart-stopping views, but they're also rather steep. And the pair of 1.0-litre iQ models we drove felt out of their depth.

Granted, the cheapest iQ models are designed to flit from Chiswick to Bond Street and back, not blast up the Col de Vence. But we were finger-tapping disappointed by the lack of oomph up the hilly Nicoise roads in the cars powered by the Aygo-sourced 1.0-litre triple.

The 1.3-litre engine option might be better (we didn't have the opportunity to drive it) and there will also be a 1.4-litre diesel option, but the UK won't bring it here. Small diesels just don't sell in Blighty...

And on the motorway?

The 1.0-litre iQ is fine on a motorway run. It'll cruise at 85mph no trouble, but we did feel strangely vulnerable when passing HGVs towering overhead. The iQ is still leagues ahead of the first-gen Smart Fortwo, which bobbed and weaved and felt generally out of sorts at dual carriageway speeds.

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