Top award for world’s smallest four seater

Although not on sale in Europe until January 6th next year the amazing new Toyota iQ has already won the 2008 Japanese Car of the Year award – very soundly beating the Citroen C5, Audi A4 and Jaguar XF. The iQ scored more than double the points of its nearest rival and got top marks from 39 of the 65 judges.
Clearly aimed at outsmarting the Smart, the new iQ has six major packaging innovations:-
The differential has been moved to the front side of the engine, which is itself canted forward. This has the effect of moving the wheels forward and with them the driver’s feet by nearly 5 in.
A new steering rack is mounted high on the firewall. To accommodate this, an all-new wiper motor and mechanism had to be built.
The fuel tank is a flat, book-thin reservoir under the rear passengers’ feet.
The climate-control unit has been made more compact (though not de-powered) and its blower moved from ahead of the passenger to above the unit. This allowed an asymmetric dash to be created, which lets the front passenger slide forward and donate more space to the one behind.
The seatbacks have a strong perimeter frame but ultrathin centres, creating more rear-seat knee room.
Repositioning the engine ancillaries around the suspension allows a turning radius of just 154 in.
All this was expensive, requiring numerous new components in place of the usual generics: differential, fuel pump and sender, wiper system, HVAC, seats, and door and window systems. It perhaps explains why it hasn’t been done before and why Toyota will need to defray the commodity costs across several high-volume lines of cars. It is expected that the iQ will be a major player in the leisure car leasing market.