"Works of serious purpose often have a purple patch or two stitched on, to shine far and wide." If by that, Horace meant that purple things stand out, he must have seen my latest test car.
And undeniably, as it turned out, the car was a work of serious purpose, although its metallic purple colour scheme did at first make me wonder. And then there is the styling: quite unlike any other car on the road, the Daihatsu Materia invites a degree of ridicule. Its tall body, curious shape and darkened windows suggest a mixture of mischief and menace that could not possibly conceal a proper car.
Yet apparently in America and Japan - where it is also badged as a Toyota - the Materia is selling like hot cakes. Could it be that the motoring public secretly yearns for something frivolous, something outside the box? Or could it be that there is a largely untapped demand for no-nonsense value-for-money motoring, in which space and functionality are not priced out of reach by excessive technology and a surfeit of seldom-used features?
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Daihatsu bills the car as a mini-MPV |
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Probably both, and the Daihatsu Materia is that car: extremely roomy for its size, easy to drive, simple to operate, and yours to drive away chuckling for under £11,000.
Daihatsu bills the car as a mini-MPV, although with so many variations on that theme I am not certain that it any longer means what it once did in the days when all MPVs had removable seats and untold configurations for people and parcels. The Materia's rear seats slide and recline, and can be folded (almost) flat to increase the luggage volume, but I am not sure that entitles Daihatsu to call it an MPV, mini or otherwise.
In fact, it is very hard to pigeon-hole the Materia. In some respects, the car it most closely resembles is the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which also is labelled an MPV but which, like the Daihatsu, is mid-way between a hatchback and an estate car. And, of course, the PT is another head-turner.
And the Materia is certainly that. I get to test all sorts of exotic machinery and I am used to my neighbours scanning my drive for a glimpse of the great and wonderful. But in the past year, few cars have attracted quite so much attention as the Materia.
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