pet connection

From darling Dan Neil in the L.A. Times:

Behold the cube, that most forthright and earnest of the Platonic solids, the noble hexahedron, the proverbial box that it came in, whatever “it” happens to be. The cube is one of nature’s transcendental shapes: Salt crystals are cubic, as are molecules of some of your better elements, such as aluminum, silver and gold. From ice to dice, from Picasso to Braque, cubism is very cool.

A cube has another property that geometers know well: It contains the largest volume of any cuboid shape for a given surface area, or linear size. Which is to say, it’s the most space-efficient of all boxes.

And that’s where the Nissan Cube comes in. One of the pioneers of the tall-wagon/multipurpose-vehicle idiom in the Japanese market, the Cube is, relatively speaking, vast on the inside. Consider that this truck-nugget — at 146.9 inches long, a foot shorter than a Mazda MX-5 — has more cargo space than a Mercedes-Benz S-class. It seats five in relative comfort over a wheelbase of just 95.66 inches and has enough head and shoulder room to accommodate a squad of Buckingham Palace guards, bearskin hats and all. This is the five-pound bucket for whatever 10 pounds you happen to have.

After years of dithering, Nissan has finally decided to bring the Cube to the U.S. market. Informed speculation has the first cars arriving in early 2009, after Nissan launches the redesigned Cube in the home market.

The car you see here is a right-hand drive, Japan-market car, brought over by Nissan as part of a multimedia project with Santa Barbara’s Brooks Institute film school and New York’s Pratt Institute. The redesigned car will be different in some of the surface detailing — and it will almost certainly have the Nissan Versa’s 1.8-liter engine instead of the 1.4-liter fly swatter under the hood now — but it will still be smaller than just about any other wagon on the market, still keenly minimalistic and still a self-consciously arch and arty bit of clumsy-cool industrial design. Pratt Institute, indeed.

Basically, then, this is last year’s model with an engine you’ll never see. So why am I driving it? Because I wanted you, Mr. and Ms. America — if you’ll put down the xylophone of barbecued ribs for a moment — to look at the car of your future: smaller, lighter (2,530 pounds), slower, less powerful. Give it a decade. This is the car you get when you put the American market’s appetite for mega-space, utility and people-moving together with a 35-mile-per-gallon CAFE standard and $5- and $6-per-gallon gasoline. You get a box on wheels.

Here’s the rest. My tail is wagging with anticipation. Sounds like a future DogCar of the Year to me. Bring it on, Nissan!

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