SPACE. THE FINITE FRONTIER.

These are the voyages of the, uh, "car-ship" iQ; her one-week mission: to explore strange new streets, to seek out new Starbucks and new fuelling-stations, to boldly park in teeny-tiny parking spaces where no car has parked before.

Well, apart from that Smart car over there, of course.

Vancouver is getting denser every day, what with the coastal mountains hemming us in and the downtown core turning from a place of business into a residential neighbourhood. Development might also be marching up the North Shore foothills in an apparent effort to provide the local black bear population with a delicious garbage buffet, but more commonly, we're building upwards.

That means, not unlike Hong Kong, more people per square inch than would be normally tolerated in your average elevator. Fine if you live and work downtown, but what if you've got to commute about during the day?

Up until now you've had just a single choice in the micro-car category: the aforementioned MercedesBenz-backed Smart car.

Toyota's Scion brand is betting their offering - the iQ - is even smarter.

Design

Pug-nosed and shortofwheelbase, the iQ resembles nothing so much as one of Voltron's shoes. I think it looks great: an escape pod shot out of a Toyota Sequoia.

My tester came in a funky purplish shade called Black Currant Metallic and my wife promptly dubbed the little car, "The Eggplant Jellybean." While the iQ is actually nearly a foot longer than the Smart, standard 16inch steel wheels and squarecut refrigerator-sized doors make it look smaller than it really is.

Which, by the way, is pretty dang small: the iQ is just three metres long and one-and-a-half meters wide. It's not just the smallest four-seater car for sale in North America; it's the smallest four-seater in the world, and shrinking the exterior dimensions over something like a Yaris is just the first step.

Environment

First off, one does not "slide" into a Scion iQ, nor do you "squeeze" into it.

Instead, pop the locks on the little tyke (keyless entry is standard), open the door, and then fairly stroll into the spacious interior. After a brief tour around the interior, head back outside again and ask yourself, "How the heck did they do that?"

Walk around to the front of the car and I'll show you. Here - unlike the rearengined Smart - would seem to be a traditional front-engined, frontwheeldrive approach to the modern compact car. But it's not.

It's true that crammed under that tiny nose are all the engine bits you'd expect to find in something more conventional, but how they're packaged is really quite clever. First, the 1.3-litre, fourcylinder engine sits beside the transmission, with the differential hanging off the front of it, allowing for a shorter overhang.

The steering-rack sits high up, the half-axles are raised up: basically the entire engine compartment looks like it was designed by an expert in Tetris. The air-conditioning is also a more compact design and the condenser portion (the cold bit) is mounted in the centre-stack, rather than in front of the passenger as is more usually the case.

All this space-saving engineering combines with equally clever trickery incabin. A traditional glovebox is turfed out in favour of a cargo-box mounted below the passenger's seat. Seatbacks are ultra-thin (but still comfy). Extended footwell space for the passenger's seat means that you can fit a third adult in the rear passenger's side, and if you're really close friends, add a fourth tucked behind the driver in a pinch.

One caveat: with all four seats occupied, the iQ's cargo space drops to pretty much nothing. If you bought groceries, they'd have to be two-dimensional stuff like flatbread, sliced ham or Kraft singles.

PERFORMANCE

Having already mentioned a displacement of only 1.3 litres, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that the iQ pumps out just 94 ponies from its little fourpot powerplant. Still, with a curb weight of less than a thousand kilograms (around 2,100 pounds), it's more than adequate for city driving.

Actually, never mind "adequate." Aside from the slight rubber band feeling that the Continuously Variable Transmission imparts, the iQ drives much more sportily than it has any right to as one of the lowestpowered cars in Canada.

What's more, slotting the CVT into "sport" mode hangs on to the revs a bit more and improves the drive at the expense of maximum fuel efficiency.

Naturally, the iQ is available pretty much everywhere except here with a manual transmission and for that I must dock it a few points on the old fun-o-meter. However, in all other respects, it drives like a modern incarnation of the Mini Cooper.

Not the current all-caps BMW-built MINI Cooper, you understand. That car is a kitschy premium retro-mobile that's a delight to drive but kind of expensive when you add a few options. The iQ is more like the original Britbuilt people's car in that it's a very clever packaging solution to the problem of how to transport people around in an efficient, yet very fun manner.

Grasp the extra thick steering wheel, spec out the sport suspension options (hey, I lowered my iQ!) and away you go: wheeee! Oh, and parking it? About as easy as playing ring-toss with a hula-hoop.

Features

Scion eliminates the guess work with all its models by providing them in one very well-equipped standard trim and letting you customize from there. Base price on my tester was $16,760 plus freight.

Standard features include Bluetooth, air-conditioning, USB audio input and tiltsteering. Safety features include anti-lock brakes and more airbags than a hovercraft convention. Driver and passenger even get one for their knees.

Optional extras are mostly of the cosmetic variety, with an exterior spoiler costing $449.50 - most of these upgrades are done at the dealer. As mentioned, the iQ already handles in a very sprightly manner, but you can get those iQ-lowering springs for slightly less than $1,000, and there are other handling enhancements from TRD (Toyota Racing Development).

Green light

Smart packaging; spacious interior; easy to park; four seats in a pinch.

Stop sign

Somewhat prone to crosswinds on the freeway; CVT saps a bit of the fun; no available manual.

The checkered flag

A niche-market peoplemover that's whip-smart and fun-to-drive.

Competitors Smart FourTwo $14,400

Mercedes-Benz made a daring move when first they introduced their Euro-pod to North America: Canadians got it first. M-B knew what we already did, Canadians are thriftier (read as: "cheaper") than our cousins to the south and the cute-but-efficient Smart FourTwo was initially a hot seller.

More than a decade later the Smart can be seen most prominently around Vancouver's streets as part of the Car2Go co-operative network. As noted, it's the iQ's closest competitor, but the Scion's seating for four and more up-to-date packaging might just put the Smart in second place.

Kia Rio $14,950

Slick styling, impressive packaging and little hummingbird sips of fuel? Sure you can buy a cute niche-vehicle like the iQ, but you could also buy a real actual car.

The Kia Rio is one such real actual car. It's got European style, a peppy little 1.6-litre engine and ample room for four plus luggage. Granted, it's not as effortless to park as the iQ (but then, neither is anything beyond a bicycle), but it's a heck of a bargain that feels like it should compete with cars a class above it.

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