| First Drive | Milan, Italy | Toyota iQ |

Toyota's iQ introduces the Toyota Optimal Drive concept to customers. The iQ's development goal was to produce a sub-city car in terms of dimensions while offering supermini segment levels of performance and family hatchback quality. To achieve this Toyota has had to have a rethink on how to package its cars, so the iQ brings a number of new innovations to the market, such as a front-mounted differential, a shallow under-floor fuel tank, slimmer seats and a space-efficient heating and air-conditioning unit. All this allows Toyota to squeeze four seats into the iQ's tiny sub three-metre footprint.

In the Metal

The iQ's styling is a slave to its space efficiency. So its wheels are placed far out in each corner. It's wide and tall but short, and the iQ can fit into the sub three-metre parking spaces only previously available to Smart Fortwo drivers. Apparently the surfaces of the iQ are mathematically complex yet "organic", Toyota's designers managing the difficult task of adding some visual flair to the engineer's extremely rigid specifications. Styled in Toyota's European design centre, the iQ is an interesting looker that manages to avoid toy-town looks despite its tiny dimensions. Indeed, it's quite an assertive, confidently styled car that looks pleasingly chunky and tough.

That confident style transfers to the iQ's interior: the cabin features an unusual, but smartly styled centre console. It all feels very well built and solid, even if the finishes on some of the plastics aren't particularly easy on the eye or in feel - the grainy door trim looks pretty nasty for instance. The chunky leather-rimmed steering wheel and neat instruments go some way to compensate, but the iQ's interior lacks the cohesive quality feel that Toyota usually offers.

What you get for your Money

Contrary to what you might expect, the iQ isn't at the lower end of the city car pricing spectrum. An entry-level 1.0-litre manual car will cost just under £9,500, which - although coming with a comprehensive specification - is rather a high entry price point. Add the Multidrive CVT automatic and you need to spend an additional £1,000. Similarly the iQ² with its push button starting, automatic climate control, automatic wipers and bi-halogen headlamps adds a further £1,000 to the iQ's list price. Avoiding getting lost doesn't come cheap either, the integrated satnav system Toyota offers costing a whopping £950.

In its defence the iQ comes with nine airbags and an arsenal of electronic stability, traction and braking systems that wouldn't disgrace a Lexus. Other kit like standard air conditioning on the entry-level models and a CO₂ figure of 99g/km - so long as you don't opt for the Multidrive automatic - means you can drive your iQ free of road tax. Combined fuel economy of 65.7mpg should mean trips to fill up that clever underfloor fuel tank are infrequent, too.

Driving it

City cars usually come with compromises and although the iQ doesn't conquer all of them Toyota has managed to produce a remarkably capable all-rounder. The 68bhp three-cylinder petrol engine provides peppy performance in town; it is rather vocal but never to the point of harshness. That engine is best mated to the five-speed manual rather than the CVT automatic, not just for economy and emissions reasons, but for performance too - the CVT adds nearly a second to the manual car's already rather slovenly 14.7 second 0-62mph time. That time is misleading in the manual car, as it feels far livelier on the road than the time suggests.

The steering is light and direct though it's devoid of any sort of feel. It's fun to drive though, the soft suspension smoothing out all but the worst bumps and manhole covers, but resulting in some fairly comical lean in the corners. It never feels unstable though, the relatively wide track making it feel remarkably planted. That's especially notable on motorways where the iQ feels more supermini than sub-supermini; it doesn't suffer from heart-in-mouth wobbles when encountering the bow wave of pressure when passing trucks. Visibility is tremendous all round too, but the privacy glass does rather hamper the view out the back at night.

Worth Noting

Toyota is very bold in calling its new iQ a four-seater. Certainly it's got four seats, but the rear two are very much for occasional use. The one behind the front passenger seat is useable thanks to Toyota's asymmetric dashboard, but you'll struggle to get anyone behind the driver - unless both the driver and rear seat passenger are miniscule. Boot space is non-existent when the rear seats are in position with space limited to the slimmest of laptop cases - just. Seats down, there's ample luggage space, and the cabin feels generous for two; three at a push; impossible for four.

Summary

Toyota's iQ heralds something of a new ideology within Toyota to further improve economy and emissions across its entire range by use of clever engineering solutions. There's no denying that the iQ is an intelligent and remarkably capable small car. Ignoring for a moment its excellent specification though the iQ is expensive, buyers more likely to be looking at the headline price in these budget conscious times than counting the number of airbags and poring over the minutiae of the specification differences. Toyota's own Aygo costs significantly less, and seats four more comfortably. The iQ is perhaps the right car for the moment environmentally and in its ethos, but with finances ever tightening it's a touch out of step with what people will want to spend on such a small, albeit impressive, city car.