But blasting down the freeway isn’t the Up!’s natural home. No, this little car is at home in the city, where small is best. The Up! is tiny at just 3.5m long and yet on the road it manages to feel far bigger than it actually is. Inside, the same thing, with the large doors and windows and the optional sunroof, it feels very airy and spacious inside.
Out and about the Up! is lots of fun to drive, and in Cornflower Blue livery, it turns heads. What really deserves special mention though is the way the Up! rides though. Most small cars battle over poor road surfaces, hopping skipping and generally bumping around. With their diminutitve wheelbase lengths, tiny wheels and primitive suspension ride and handling are usually first on the list of gripes. But not so in the Up! which manages to take everything in its stride and really has an impressively comfortable ride.
Having spent a week in it, in a lot of ways though, the Up! reminds me of the original Beetle. It’s a simple, well-engineered small car, and shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to run either. Over the week I drove it, mostly in town driving it averaged under 6 litres per 100km. Take a longer trip and that will drop below 5 litres per 100km.
