The other day I made a wrong turn on a narrow dead end street and had to make a struggling turning within its 3 meter narrow width. The narrow street was hardly wide enough for my van to pass a huge luxurious Toyota Alphard parking on one of its section. No less than five times shifting between my subcompact van’s automatic gears from D to R back and forth while half of a dozen oncoming motor bikes were patiently waiting.
It was a moment for city driver being blessed with power steering, automatic transmission, high seating visibility and most importantly small turning radius; features which only available on a subcompact van or MPV with bonus of lots of spaces to haul passenger of hockey team and their gears or even cargo alike. It was also a fortunate day I had not driven our classic 97 Accord that day, for its turning diameter is merely 11 meter.
Mini MPVs are under 4100 mm (160 in) long where as Compact MPVs have a length of between 4,200–4,600 millimetres (170–180 in), compact MPV enjoyed some popularity in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. On the other hand my blessed van has 41150 mm length, just at the precise dimension recipe of city driving flexibility in the bewildering short cut route of Jakarta. I was trying to avoid a long typical bumper to bumper style of traffic jam and consequently an abrupt detour was in dire need to save time!
Perhaps that is the reason for many premium auto makers heading into the foray of subcompact car segment as well as partially subsidizes their expensive R & D on this downturn time. Only recently Aston Martin has released new pictures of the Cygnet, the economy car based on the Toyota iQ; featuring a very short, streamlined nose and a tapering upper-body rear, it already foreshadowed today's, mostly one-box, MPV designs.
Similar to the concept of "Micro Bus" Volkswagen Type 2, my daily drive is a 'forward control' van in which the driver is seated above the front wheels. Though the Type 2 was introduced in 1950 the concept was invented as far back as 1930s by a very short, streamlined nose and a tapering upper-body rear yet futuristic design and curvaceous Stout Scarab. Its headlamps were set behind a fine, vertical-bar grille, and at the rear, narrow chrome bars curved from the back window down to the bumper, giving the car its iconic Art Deco appearance; the period of which Art Deco was regarded at its height.
Next: Leisure Drive on Nissan Sentra as the best old beat up car…
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