Nissan Brings Japanese Mini-Cars to the US

LOS ANGELES — The first box opened at the Los Angeles Auto Show nowadays restricted another box - Nissan’s funky little dice city car.

The dice looks looks like a big marshmallow and brings Japan’s love of small cars to America, where the 30-plug mps wonder rolls into showrooms next fall. As the name implies, the dice is nothing more than a box on wheels that Nissan design chief Shiro Nakamura called “clever, witty and fun, with a strange blend of fashion and function.”

He forgot to say “adorable,” in a “What the hell is that?” kind of way.

The car that made its worldwide debut nowadays is the third-generation of a car that’s been wildly successful in Japan. By bringing it to America, Nissan is betting the dice will be a hit with the same urban hipsters who bought the first-gen Scion XB, another car that looked like the box it came in. Nissan says the dice isn’t a car, it’s an experience — how else to explain Nakamura’s saying the dice doesn’t have an interior, it has “a social space,” or, whether you prefer, “a

Whatever you shout it, it’s pretty freakin’ roomy. There’s room for five folks inside that little box, which is just 13 feet towering and not fairly 5.5 feet wide. Interior appointments include a CD stereo with XM radio that blares through six speakers powered by a big honkin’ Rockford-Fosgate amp and, of course, a jack for your iPod. That asymmetrical rear and side window not only looks cool, it increases visibility.

Power comes from a 1.80-liter four-banger that puts out 122 horsepower through the front wheels. There’s a six-speed transmission or, whether you’re too lazy to shift, a continuously variable motorized transmission that Nissan says allows the dice to get more than 30 mpg on the highway. (Exact figures haven’t been released yet.)

Photos by Jim Merithew / Wired.com

Original post by Chuck Squatriglia

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