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Yes, that face does look familiar. You know a miniaturized bread van/hearse/armoured car combo when you see it. But the badge is all wrong.
This is the Scion xB, but the ad slogan is different. "You'd be crazy not to!" says Daihatsu UK. Yes; with an exclamation point.
Toyota owns Scion. Toyota took a controlling stake in Daihatsu (51.2%) in 1999. So here you have the Daihatsu Materia. Where's the L? You're guess is as good as mine. Daihatsu's are not luxurious Lexus sedans. Perhaps they felt Material would be deceving, seeing as how so little material is needed to build most Daihatsu's.
The Materia, a word which makes me smirk every time I type it, starts at £10,995 in the UK. For that price you get a 1.5L, 102bhp four-cylinder and a manual trans. The Materia Auto, as you would assume, adds an automatic transmission. Nice, thanks.Daihatsu.co.uk's best line is as follows: "A 1.5 litre engine guarantees lively performance with economy giving 39.2 mpg (manual transmission) on the Combined Cycle with a 0 – 62 mph acceleration time of 10.8 seconds." Guarantees? Guarantees? Did they put the guarantees with the wrong subject, having intended to place it after the 'with' and a 'd' in place of the 's' on the end? I think so.The accessory list is Scionesque in its length. Vehicular brethren are more plentiful for the Daihatsu, however. The Sirion, Terios, and Copen are itsy-bitsy in their own ways.
So, Across The Pond we went. And what did we find? An xB branded with a badge which stands for a company name most Americans can't pronounce.
Frankfurt's Auto Show heralded a return to small-car expansion in autodom over the last week or more. GoodCarBadCar covered the introductions of the Ford Verve, Mitsubishi Concept cX, Volkswagen up!, Toyota iQ, and Subaru Justy.
In case you were craving some more small, here's a few more samples. A few weeks ago GCBC went Across the Pond to overview Skoda. If you hadn't met the Fabia before then, you made acquaintance with an orange version after reading about 70% of the article. Skoda manages to impress a fair number of buyers these days, but the Czech automaker (a VW subsidiary) knows just as well as Mercedes, BMW, and Audi that marketing to the little crosssections; the niches, is an easy way to make a bit of extra $.
The Fabia then, stretched in its wagon format to be called the Combi, was introduced as the Skoda Fabia Combi Scout. Skoda's has already slathered the Roomster and Octavia with Scoutness, so why not the Fabia? (I can think of a few reasons, none of which Skoda execs want to he
ar.) Lower-body cladding is a great way for buyers to feel remorse two years on when they realize they paid extra for a trimline that was genuinely just that.... a few lines of trim. Admittedly, the Fabia Combi Scout does have a smidgen of cool.
Daihatsu is a citizen of Toyota's empire, as you can see in the story about the Subaru Justy, oddly enough. The Copen was introduced a number of years ago as a very cheap and economical alternative to the Audi TT, but as an alumimum hard-top convertible. I don't actually know anybody who would consider an Audi TT and switch to the Daihatsu Copen.... but, the Copen was surely TT-inspired. At present, the UK edition of the Copen features an 86-bhp, 1.3L four-cylinder. That enables the Copen to proceed to 60mph in less than ten seconds and achieve 47.1mpg on the combined cycle in Europe.
Frankfurt didn't see the debut of a new Copen. Or did it? Daihatsu's OFC-1 is surely Copen-like, with a small turbocharged engine and a top that drops in 10 seconds. Copen-like it is, but perhaps better-than-Copen styling and a more-modern-than-Copen structure. Daihatsu's other small car concept was the striking Heart and Smile Mover. Uh-huh. Heart and Smile Mover. Oh so Japanese, the HSC has a 660cc engine which provides very little in terms of horsepower but plenty of ssssmiles per gallon. We're not quite sure why Daihatsu thinks that HSC is a proper abbreviation for Heart and Smile Mover, but I am sure that these cars qualify for tax breaks, cheaper insurance, and parking proof exemptions because of their kei car status. Small engine + small car = yellow-plate status.
