This quartet of quirk shows how
to make the oddball saleable
@wheelsaustralia 105
ACK when people’s houses were a
Kenwood mix-master of patterns, just
like their clothing, and Aussies bought
cars painted in every colour of the
rainbow, the small-car category was a hot-
bed of weird, wacky, and wonderful. And the
beige homogeneity of the future was just
an Orwellian fantasy.
From in-line, flat and vee engines
to gearboxes mounted inside the
sump, ‘hammock’ seats, flip-up
windows and even a single front-
facing door, the creative freedom
in designing a small car meant that
car manufacturers could genuinely
push the envelope. But then the world
stopped taking risks and the small-car
category became depressingly conformist,
with the odd exception like Renault’s first-generation
Twingo and Ford’s original Ka.
Citroen, Fiat, Mini and Suzuki have all made sizeable
impressions on the weird and wacky aspects of our
psyche. Think France’s ‘Tin Snail’, the 2CV; Italy’s rear-
engined lineage of 500, 600 and 850 (and variations
like the original Multipla); England’s game-changing,
transverse-engined, front-drive Mini of ’59; and Japan’s
trailblazing two-stroke, four-wheel-drive Suzuki LJ.
And judging by this quartet of quirk, each brand has
rediscovered how to make the slightly oddball saleable.
Headlining 2016’s freakazoid flock is Citroen’s
defiantly left-wing C4 Cactus. Two years after its
Geneva show debut, the double chevron’s ode to utilityis finally raising eyebrows in Australia, resplendent in a
variety of eye-widening colours to play off the patented
‘Airbump’ cladding (in black, grey, cream or chocolate)
on its doors, and its concept-car-like LED running-light
slashes. With ’50s-style bench-type seating, an avant-
garde dashboard and several unusual design details,
the Cactus is a car you’ll either love or loathe – name
included – depending on where you’re positioned on
the conservatism scale.
Chasing a similar market with a similar emphasis on
design, Fiat’s ‘SUV when you aren’t having an SUV’,
the 500X, also stands out from the crowd. Literally.
Melding the design cues of Fiat’s hugely successful,
decade-old Nuova Cinquecento into a five-door
expanded hatchback, the 500X measures a statuesque
1600mm tall. And that’s the front-driver. The range-
topping AWD Cross Plus hikes that 20mm further,
making it 10mm taller than Suzuki’s more traditionally
proportioned Vitara ‘All Grip’.
No matter which wheels are doing the driving,
Suzuki’s reborn Vitara is like a room with a view.
Front passengers feel almost like they’re sitting on
a throne as they peer over its retro, clamshell-style
bonnet, inspired by the original 1988 Vitara. But it’s
underneath where the latter-day Vitara both conforms
to and confounds Suzuki tradition.
Riding on all-wheel-drive underpinnings, the flagship
Vitara S Turbo continues the DNA link back to Suzuki’s
pioneering baby 4WDs of the ’70s. But with monocoque
construction and a feisty all-new 1.4-litre ‘Boosterjet’
four, this Vitara has more in common with Suzuki’s hot-
hatch lineage than any previous SUV it has produced.WORDS
NATHAN
PONCHARD
PHOTOS
ELLEN
DEWAR