The Japanese automaker is getting ready to introduce its 2012 Scion iQ “Premium Micro-Subcompact,” billed as “the world’s smallest four-seater.”
The iQ, just 10 feet long, goes on sale on the West Coast in October, then in the rest of the country beginning early next year.
Prices will start at $15,265 (plus $730 freight), and the tiny car comes with a 94-horsepower, 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine, paired with a continuously variable automatic transmission.
It will have a combined city/highway EPA fuel-economy rating of 37 mpg, which won’t make it the most fuel-efficient car on the market, but it will be competitive.
There are cars with much more interior space that have similar fuel economy, however — even some compacts, such as the new Chevrolet Cruze.
The iQ is just a bit longer than the Smart ForTwo, which is 8.8 feet long.
But the iQ seats four, while the Smart, which has been slow to catch on with U.S. consumers since its introduction four years ago, has room for only two.
Smart, a brand of Germany’s Mercedes-Benz, originally had planned to introduce a ForFour model in the United States, which would have been about the same size as the iQ. But plans for that model were scrapped, and all we’ve seen is the smaller model, which hasn’t been much more than a cute curiosity on U.S. streets so far.
As for the iQ, it will be the smallest vehicle Toyota sells in the United States, but cars of this size are popular in many other countries, particularly in places where people have lower incomes and gasoline is more expensive.
Scion gets the iQ in its lineup because it is Toyota’s “innovative” youth-oriented brand. But the iQ might be a hard sell among young, first-time car buyers. The Smart has skewed toward a much older audience than the under-30 crowd that has been targeted by Scion.
Aimed at urban drivers who must regularly negotiate crowded city streets, the iQ might not be a big draw in sprawling areas where cars that can burn up the freeways at 80 mph or above are more in demand.
The automaker says the car does not sacrifice “features or comfort to reduce its footprint,” but instead “relies on intelligent design.”
Wheelbase is just 78.7 inches — 18.2 inches shorter than that of Toyota’s smallest U.S. vehicle now, the Yaris three-door hatchback.
The iQ is 66.1 inches wide, though, which is almost the same as the Yaris, at 66.7 inches. That gives it a “confident stance that handles like a much larger car,” Toyota says.
The engine, with its 94 horsepower and 89 foot-pounds of torque, isn’t far from the 107 horsepower and 104 foot-pounds of the Yaris. It has Toyota’s latest variable-valve technology.
Safety is the biggest concern of many consumers when it comes to a car this small. The iQ comes with 11 air bags, including the “world’s first rear-window air bag,” Toyota says. Others include driver and front-passenger front bags, driver and front-passenger seat-mounted side bags, side-curtain bags for both rows, a front-passenger knee bag and a Scion-first — driver and front-passenger seat-cushion air bags.
Among other standard safety gear is Toyota’s Star Safety System, which includes antilock brakes with electronic brake-force distribution and brake assist; electronic stability control with traction control; Smart Stop brake override; and a tire-pressure monitoring system.
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