As the postmistress says to Shed behind the village hall, today we’re going to look at something small but rather wonderful.
Designed in Toyota’s European Design studio in Nice and launched at Geneva in early 2008, the iQ was sold in Europe for six years from 2009, or five years in the UK. As befits the name, it was a clever wee thing. It was the smallest four-seater on the market, and a miracle of packaging.
The design and location of the diff and steering gear allowed Toyota to squeeze four seats, nine airbags and a Euro NCAP five-star crash test score into it. The asymmetric dash, super-compact AC unit and detachable glovebox gave them the ability to put the passenger seat forward to create more space in the rear. The ‘techno-organic’ V-shaped centre console and door armrests were described by Toyota as mathematical emulations of the ocean-going manta ray. Not sure how relevant that is but the good news was that six-foot-plus drivers had no problem fitting into iQs.
iQs only weighed 860kg so even with the weediest 67hp/72lb ft 1.0-litre three-pot motor on duty (as here) it scuttled hither and yon with a cheery verve. McPherson struts at the front and a torsion beam rear gave it a very acceptable ride quality for its size, and for Shed’s bonus delight it came with the certainty that Mrs Shed would never get in one.
Yen-quid exchange rates, upcoming emissions regs and a need to make room for the gen-two Aygo killed off European iQs in late 2015, by which point annual sales had dropped to under a thousand from an earlier peak of over 44,000. Shed thought it was a premature chop at the time and he hasn’t changed his opinion nearly ten years on. The iQ still looks fresh, modern and eminently buyable as a new car, let alone as a used one for under £2k. An 11kWh EV prototype with a 78mph top whack and a 65-mile range was shown at Geneva in 2011. An updated version of that with a 2025-spec battery pack would surely do all right.
Just as an aside, you may recall that in 2011 Aston Martin released the Cygnet, a leathery but otherwise largely unchanged iQ with AM badges and grille. At £31k for the manual or £32k for the CVT auto it was more than twice the price of the iQ. 400 Cygnet orders were placed as soon as it was announced, mostly by city-dwelling owners of normal Astons, predictably raising many a howl of derision from both press and punters. Get this though: as we went to press, five used Cygnets were on sale in the UK, and none of them were under £30k. Some were well over £40k, which just goes to show er, something.
As a further side note, Aston’s Q division made a one-off 4.7 V8-powered Cygnet. Our Matt had a bum-clenching go in this 436hp rollcage on wheels in 2018. That car’s MOT expired in June this year with 2,800 miles showing on the 2023 test. Wonder where it is now.
More realistically, but not by much, an official GRMN-tuned iQ Supercharger prototype was revealed at the 2011 Tokyo show with 126hp from a blown 1.3 engine, 6-speed close-ratio gearbox, sports suspension, full bodykit and 16in wheels. Toyota actually went ahead and made a hundred of them for the Japanese market. Needless to say, these GRMN iQs are very expensive now. Shed found an 8,000-mile example for sale in Osaka at 5.5 million yen, nearly £28k in Britdosh.
Thankfully, regular iQs are a lot cheaper than either this or a used Cygnet, but they’re not as dirt-cheap as some of you might think. The realistic starting price for an uncrashed one is £1,700 and that will only get you a high-miler with 100k (or a lot more) on the clock. Our 2010 car has 117,000 but it looks very clean with its full history and recent service and it has the manual gearbox rather than the CVT Multidrive, so Shed thinks it’s about on the money at £1,995. There are other nice features too. Excitingly it’s got a ‘Mode PWR’ button on the steering wheel. OK, all that does is turn the radio on and off and switch between the USB, aux and CD modes, but you don’t need to tell anybody else that. According to the ad it’s also got Radio 4 Seats which are presumably reassuringly comfortable.
The MOT runs to next April and shows one advisory for a non-excessive oil leak that’s been around for the last 18 months at least. Oil consumption could be an issue on these, as could peeling paint, but iQs bought from a main dealer would often be resprayed for free – or not if it was ten minutes outside the paint warranty. The rest of our shed’s history from 2013 has thrown up nothing more worrisome than normal wear of tyres, brakes and suspension bushes. The official mpg is 64, the insurance group is three and the vehicle tax zero, which might also describe your interest in it. Think twice though. How many cars are there where you can reach around and touch the back window? Not many. A Peel or a bubble car maybe, but they won’t do 93mph.
There’s a following for these little cars. That, plus Toyota dependability, means you could run one for a good few years and unload it without losing much (if any) of your initial outlay. Some late low-milers are currently being advertised for over £8k. Against a new price in 2014 of between £8,800 and £9,600 it does make you think.
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