Gadgetory

the newest Scion is small but almost fit in the same box your smart car came in they call cars this size city cars you know a lot of folks see what they call city cars they scoff and say I couldn't get anything in there how would I get my groceries I don't know we did ok filling this one there's three more guys in there still let's go for a ride in the 2012 Scion iQ and check the tech first off let's understand the IQ it's not small to be commercially cheap you can get a much bigger Corolla for about the same price you can also get a bigger mp3 player than a nano for about the same price the idea is miniaturization done well is worth something and in certain cities where a parking space may only occur when two other cars park sloppily this little guy can be a rolling mental-health clinic now the first thing people have to be convinced of about little tiny cars like this and I do this all the time is that they tend to be spacious inside I don't get it you can get into an Audi a6 like I was 10 minutes ago and feel more cramped than you are in this a smart fortwo or my 68 Fiat 850 it's just a weird thing about little cars it's also not small in basic head-unit technology it's a pioneer unit but different than we've seen in scions beforehand you've got a touchscreen panel right here for gain to your various options let's go around them one at a time here's my phone screen I do have my phone paired it's a very clear basic interface bluetooth streaming is also in here contacts are imported very nicely and I can scroll them very quickly that's a nice response I like that ok our sources are shown on this kind of needlessly tricky Cover Flow looking thing I prefer to say screw that let's go to the all button AM FM we're also HD radio enabled on this guy CD single optical slot up here no DVD playback ipod lower-left that hooks up to this USB + aux jack down on the cone so check out Pandora again I've got an iOS device paired the Pandora apps installed when I launch it I get a scion brand on it the screen goes blank and control and logic are shifted to the vehicle notice Pandora carries over all the metadata as well as the thumbs-up thumbs-down functionality everything you'd expect on the actual app now while you're asking how's the nav well there's no nav on this head unit again being a pre-production car I don't know where this sits in the line this could be the base head unit or one notch up have to wait till this is actually on showrooms and can be configured on their web buying guide but so far that's all I can tell you right now you may want to make plans to bring your own nav device based on past Scion factory Navrang we've seen bottom-right corner of my sound settings these are interesting here Scion sound profile natural hear and feel they're just presets of EQ if I go under sound I can roll my own EQ with treble bass front rear and left and right for the fader and the balanced DSP will give you the ability to turn on or off the automatic volume control it's pretty common in most cars Oh check this out under DSP I like this I've got the advanced sound retriever it's a pioneer technology that tries to retrieve some of that lost detail in compressed sources I really like using this on bluetooth streaming because bluetooth streaming sounds like hell you can turn this on at three different levels either not at all low rate or high rate Oh unlike some Scion products where they add this horrible Bluetooth system that has no interface it's just a button over here a black rocker switch and a microphone this one's got the cheapy microphone up here on the wheel but now finally I've got the ability to go do settings on the phone from the screen thank you yep that's the engine all this much of it 1.3 liter inline-4 pressed up way by the nose here sidesaddle front-wheel drive nothing about this spells performance it spells efficiency you've got 94 horsepower 89 foot-pounds of torque them's little numbers but so is the weight of this car it's about 2,000 pounds was the last time you had a car that only weighed a ton zero to sixty more than likely and the mpg is 36 37 and all of that gets done through a one choice only CVT continuously variable transmission and there's electric power steering on this guy which is part of how they bring up the mpg so no hydraulic pump to run it it's an electric motor that gives you that assist the IQ has much the same high-top sneaker look as a smart fortwo just kind of Falls here and it's 14 critical inches longer making it just big enough to look weird on a shelf at Toys R Us oh and when getting in or out of the back of one of these do it on the passenger side that seat slides farther forward so you're less likely to turn an IQ into an eyeful our delivery is now parking it's a little trick that manufacturers will do they have a car with a place wallet and they'll give it really vigorous initial tipping with a front load a lot of the engines response early in the accelerator pedal travel it creates the appearance of power but then it runs out of steam runs out of breath higher up this car is in that range but that makes it a good city driver the engine is particularly literally intrusive unlike a smart fortwo the engine of course is in the front the smart fortwo it'd be in the back but I'm hearing a lot of you know kind of unpleasant engine note it's a $16,000 car so I don't think it gets any demerits for that but it doesn't sound as smooth as I'd like it to the ride quality is quite good it's much more civilized car than a smart fortwo in everyday driving visibility is actually pretty good it's funny you get a blind spot not in the rear corner but on the rear side because you've got this huge panel over here between the porthole window and the back light in the rear and of course our wheels on the rear are all the way pushed out to the end of the body that will result in a lack of dampening weight overhang of the rear that tends to give some cars a little bit of dampening against road gems in this car you're going to hit something on the rear wheels you're going to feel all of it go nothing counterbalance is that hanging past the axle money okay let's price this little Scion iQ it's a 2012 that's coming out in a rolling launch beginning in October 2011 for the west coast and not wrapping up until March 2012 availability around the middle of the country about $16,000 base inexpensive little car of course the options are still a little TBD in terms of Tekin it up from the factory but of course that head units pretty hot mostly this car is a blank canvas the idea is to get a scion and do a lot of your own thing after market but generally speaking we're looking at a new 45 added to the album that is Scion you