Top Ten Urban Vehicles

There is a tacit understanding that if you drive and park in major metro areas, you stand a good chance of getting dinged, scratched, robbed, and otherwise molested. Your car does, too. This does not in any way diminish the shock value of seeing year-old Porsche 911s on Park Avenue whose bumpers look like they were embellished with claw hammers. Large initial investment is simply not recommended.

 

Parking violations are a major source of municipal revenue generation. San Francisco issues 1.9 million parking citations a year, good for more than $85 million in revenue. Scarcity of public parking forces people into "questionable" spaces, with meter maids serving as judge, jury, and executioner. Yes, public transportation is the ideal solution for myriad reasons. For those whose lives require a vehicle, however, one solution is to drive a smaller car that will sneak into the many petite spots that remain otherwise unused. We offer you 10 vehicles ideally suited to city duty, mostly by virtue of being short.  

 

The Smart Fortwo, lengthened for our market, is indeed longer than an H2 is wide, but only by 25 inches. The Fortwo will be, by more than three feet, the shortest car sold here when it gambols onto U.S. roads this winter. First-generation Fortwo sales slumped after its launch in Europe nine years ago. But shortly thereafter, people realized that its designers were right: The Lilliputian Smart meets almost all their automotive needs. Getting 43 mpg on the highway is pleasant, but unless circling city centers for hours stalking spaces melts your butter, parking ease is the Fortwo's greatest ace. Cross-country trips are possible with a 90-mph top speed. Its 71-hp, 1.0-liter three-cylinder engine mated to a five-speed automated-manual gearbox won't make your drive nearly as pulse-quickening, however, as will being tailgated by Freightliners cruising mere feet from the back of your head.

 

Penske-owned United Auto Sales, which will handle sales of the Fortwo in this country starting in January, won't need to pull cold, dead flag-waving bodies out of Chevrolet Suburbans to find buyers. The Fortwo will be marketed only in large metro areas, and as both a sensible solution and highly coveted accessory, it should have no trouble selling in boutique quantities, especially with a base price of about $12,000.

 

A hundred thousand yipster owners can't be wrong. And they're not: The Mini is a good car and particularly well-suited to urban life. Until the Smart hits streets this winter, the Mini will hold the title of shortest car sold in the U.S. The Mini was a lethal parking weapon in San Francisco until everyone else bought one and all those tight parking spots filled. Folding down the rear seats forms a flat floor, allowing the Mini to swallow a copious load of groceries or midcentury knickknacks. They're not exactly cheap, starting at $18,700, but that buys you BMW build quality and engineering. In Cooper S form, the Mini is a pleasure on weekend trips with linked turns that don't involve curbs and stoplights.

 

Its name partly inspired by gay Paree, the Yaris was designed for the tight city centers of Europe and Asia and brought here to replace the insipid Echo. A meager $11,960 will get you into not just a base hatchback, but a Toyota. Slightly cartoonish lines make the Yaris as minacious as a duckling and conceal four more cubic feet of space than in a Mini Cooper. Suspension calibration favors ride over handling, offering cushiness rare in this segment and helpful in cities like Detroit where road maintenance is seemingly the charge of pick-ax-wielding orcs.

 

Unlike in most other countries, subcompact cars are rarely a rewarding drive in the U.S., largely because price point is generally the cardinal engineering directive. The Honda Fit, however, dispenses fun disproportionate to its $14,585 price. Also unexpected are the same high-quality interior materials used in Honda products costing two and three times as much. The Fit's 109-hp four-cylinder won't haul you to the checker in a drag race, but it will fling you into corners at a clip sufficient to experience a chassis so well tuned that it is one of the quickest cars ever through our lane-change test.

 

Best-in-class cargo space and standard all-wheel drive make the Suzuki SX4 an interesting alternative to compact SUVs for those who want something smaller than an Impreza. We see it as a good solution for urbanites who live in snow-choked barrios like Buffalo or want to pile skis, bikes, and snowboards into and onto their vehicles for weekend trips to the mountains. And as a true Suzuki product, not a rebadged Daewoo, the SX4 is injected with a touch of the sporting spirit otherwise flaunted in the brand's mastery of two-wheeled products.