I have a certain fondness for small, unashamedly boxy cars. That’s why I used to own a Scion xB (which later became the Autopian Test Car, then a rally car, of sorts), and it’s also why I find myself always drawn to funny little “tall boy” one-box Japanese Kei-class cars and other small boxes on wheels, like the Kia Soul, Daihatsu Naked, and the Nissan Cube.
We did get the Cube in America, but, sadly, it was a sort of watered-down Americanized version when compared to the previous, JDM-focused generation that came before. I mean, it wasn’t bad, and it maintained a decent degree of charming weirdness, like an asymmetrical rear design and an optional bit of shag carpeting on the dashboard that was referred to as “cube pubes” or “cubic hair.”
Overall, though, I think the third-gen/US-market version lost some charm. Look for yourself – here’s the 3rd gen/US one:
…and here’s the second-gen/JDM version:
See? There’s just something more appealing about this earlier generation of Cube. And in this earlier generation of Cube, there was one version that I had no idea existed until now. A version, released in 2003, that was about 6.7 inches longer than the regular Cube, and bore the peculiar name Cube³, usually written as Cube Cubic.
It’s tricky to see that this car is actually longer than the regular Cube, but it is, a bit. It needs that extra room to cram in a third row of seats:
Look at that! Holy crap, right? This thing sat seven people! Two up front, three in the middle, and two more in the rearmost row. You could, of course, fold down the back row of seats for five people and more cargo, or the middle and back rows could be folded flat for two people and a metric crapton of cargo, too. It’s just such an astonishing use of space!
I mean, consider this: the Cube Cubic was about 3900mm long, about 153.5 inches long. Compare that to a Volkswagen New Beetle of the same era, which was 162.6 inches long! That’s about 10 inches longer, and with nowhere close the interior room, and seating three people fewer! Or, if you like grammar that will get me yelled at, less!
Look, here’s a walkaround that shows the rearmost row, folded and upright:
The seating is tight way in the back, but I would imagine it is usable, if you’re not hauling 3/4 of a basketball team, or something like that. And did you clock the column-mounted shifter? That’s pretty great, too, and space-efficient.
I’m just amazed they made this thing a full three-row vehicle. It has to be one of the smallest three-row vehicles around, at least in the modern era. Fiat’s newer Multipla is just a bit longer, at 3994mm; still small, but the Cubic is a touch smaller. And I should note that the new Multipla is not a three-row: it seats six by having two rows of three-passenger seats:
Of course, I think the real champ of smallest three-row cars has to go to the original Fiat Multipla, the 600 Multipla:
That was only – only – a six-seater, but it’s still three rows.
Really, these are all remarkable feats of packaging, and I’m impressed. I should find six friends to drive around with and go on and on about it.
I was looking at buying one of the 2nd gen ones a few years back, but every single one I found had an automatic gearbox.
I’m hoping Telo will eventually figure out how to squeeze a third row into their vehicle to bring us an honest to goodness American compact 3 row vehicle.
OK, I sort of love it. I test drove both the manual and auto (CVT) versions of the regular US Cube when it first came out and they were both… OK. The first-gen Kia Soul was a bit more entertaining to drive, and I can’t recall which gen of Scion xB was out at the time: I drove both and liked them both. Of course, I was also a fan of the Honda Element in various configs 2WD/AWD/manual/auto.
But I never bought any of these cars. 🙁 I’m not sure why. The Element feels like it will go a few hundred thousand miles w/o problem, provided you don’t live somewhere where they salt the roads. The 2nd gen xB is practically a quiet and smooth hauler, what with it having the 2.4L engine from the Camry at the time. Souls were fine, and despite how well they (anecdotally) survive big accidents, they always felt a bit too flashy for me. Cubes were just OK, perfectly fine as an urban commuter, but…
But a Cube(3… I don’t know how to do superscript here) with that extra room in back. If we had had that here in the States, the Cube would have been much higher on my list.
Long time listener, first time caller. I actually own and DD one! Looks exactly like the light blue one above. I have owned a LOT of cars and motorcycles, but for city driving (currently live in Sydney, Aus) it is hands down the best car I have ever owned. Super tight turning radius. Easy to park. Soft suspension for dealing with crappy roads. And the internal space is INSANE. I became the regular kid hauler as both of my sons grew into the teen years. No problem taking one of them and five friends to a birthday event. And that third row seat just folds down into a flat cargo space, as do the second row seats, allowing the whole thing to serve as a mini-minivan. I have hauled furniture, lumber, surfboards, bikes — you name it — in this configuration. And I disagree with Spikedlemon. I do find it cheap and cheery – at least with the lighter, tan interior. For a long time I would say the only downside is that it is NOT fast. We joke that pressing the accelerator only makes the car louder and not faster. That said, now that it is my 18 year old son’s daily ride, this pokeyness is actually an asset. Based on the Micra, so mechanical parts are easy to find. Really, getting to buy a Cube3 was the cherry on top for the move to Australia.
I’ve seen them in Japan and on the auction sites. I recall some advertisement with old people and kids in it. Sort of multigenerational vehicle like the Chinese are doing now. I believe there were a few Daihutsu that looked like they shouldn’t have a 3rd row that did in the same era. Terios had slightly extended version. There might have been a van like thing like the move too. That was the biggest era of Japanese squeezing a 3rd row in to almost anything. The 8 passenger crv was one strangest but Toyota having a 3rd row in a Rav 4 for the US was a head scratcher.
Well that’s actually sort of cute³.
I liked the original xB a lot. A friend had one and it was legitimately fun to drive around town. The Cube was less attractive to me, but I’m going to say that I like it better than the 2nd gen you prefer. Putting someone in the 3rd row seats of the subject car must contravene the Geneva Convention.
I’ve always wanted to buy a Cube and paint/wrap it in a harlequin scheme. Just to watch people try and solve it.
I’d rather the long wheelbase without the largely useless third row. Or at least make it removable so you can just leave it at home.
I think the modern Multipla is rather clever – got a taxi ride in one in Rome.
I can never get past how ugly that generation (the one pictured) was.
I don’t disagree! But to me they are so ugly they go all the way back around to being kind of cool, LOL.
Nissan Cube: existence is utile.
I wonder whether that last photo, of the 600 Multipla, has been AI-scrubbed (before Autopian ever got to it). What I’m seeing is mouths that are lopsided for the faces, some of which look like they’re for a person looking sideways rather than forwards with the rest of their face, some lopsided eyes, and a steering wheel hand that is weird. Either that or the artist didn’t do a very good job originally.
The people are paper cutouts, just as they appear. How else could you fit six of them in there?
Not to mention the wasp-waisted lady in the red dress who kinda looks like her upper body got turned around backwards.
Oh no kidding, her torso and arms look like they are facing away. And her right (thought that would make it left now) hand is weirdly resolved.
The Cube was out during a time when I was renting cars quite frequently. Despite being on the same bones I rather hated the Versa and always tried to avoid them, but I thought the Cube was kind of quirky and more practical so I never minded.
No question the 2nd gen is a much better looking car than what we got in the US.
The Cube was an awesome little car (very van-like). But it felt so cheap, and not in a cheerful/fun/frugal way.
It was built on the Nissan Tiida/Versa hatch bones with the same engine/transmission. IIRC: you could get a 5MT or the CVT. The Versa, at least, was an honest “cheap transportation” that drove well (for the money). The Cube felt like it could have/should have been more than just a oddly-shaped-van-version.
Maybe if they had hamsters advertising it, it would have done better.
I think another thing that helped the Kia Soul survive as long as it did, despite its late arrival, was the fact that it was marketed as a crossover. It did have some crossover-inspired styling, some versions more so than others, but it never really looked much like one in general to me. I’ve always just seen it as the same type of car as the Cube and xB.
Yeah, it genuinely looked closer to a normal car.
Which attracted buyers who just wanted, you know, a normal car.
To be fair, so did the xB (especially when it moved up to the Corolla platform and didn’t look like it was designed with nothing but straight edges). Ironically, it was the original Echo/Yaris based version that seemed to be the better seller, and there are still many people wanting another car like that today. The platform itself is still popular, with the US seemingly trying to buy up as many of the Open Deck ute versions as they could.
The Cube was available in both a manual or CVT. When my oldest son was getting to driving age, I was contemplating getting a manual Cube for him, but I wasn’t finding any nearby. I had a CVT Cube rental once. It was very spacious inside despite the compact exterior dimensions, but the CVT driving experience was off-putting.
It’s just more car to send to the junkyard early when the Jatco CVT prematurely fails.
What would really impress me is the aforementioned first-gen xB similarly stretched, with perhaps the 1.8 Corolla engine to handle the extra mass.
I’ve never driven a Cube, but my 15-year-old has. It was one of the vehicles used by the driving school she went to. I’ve also always liked the naked practicality of the “wheeled toaster” school of car design. I include the Cube, xB, Soul, and to a lesser extent the Jeep Renegade. The Jeep is a bit more sculpted and off-road focused than the others, but is almost identical in dimensions to a Soul. One of the popular Renegade forums is actually called ToasterJeep.
You mention them all except the Element? Shame!
The Honda Element was a much higher-class/build-quality of vehicle next to the early Cube/xB/Soul/Renegades.
I had an Element and tested a Cube. I don’t disagree with you, but people in the function over form camp mention them all in the same conversation.
You often get Patriot and Vue mixed in sometimes Aztec, FJ, Juke, and Nitro. I prefer the term hamster car. It narrows it down to basically early xb and soul. People know what you mean. xb felt very daihutsu when they were new not terrible just built to a cost but they held up well. Soul I didn’t think would survive but seemed to be a leap forward for Kia. They just go and don’t look so bad. In hindsight I think soul are way better built then given credit for. Where element gets a little too much credit.
I knew I was forgetting one. How could I forget the one with the biggest cult following of them all? I have no excuse and as punishment I will purposely burn my toast for the next week.
I snortled about the toast.
My favorite Nissan Cube design fact: the wrap-around side of the rear window is opposite in RHD and LHD markets.
I love this, it’s is two different sets of tooling, for what is, lets be honest a fairly niche product, imagine what that would have cost! BMW couldn’t even be bothered to move the wipers over for RHD on the E39 5 series, nor Peugeot on the 206 or 207.
The Cubed Cube really is a handsome vehicle, and the diluted, less-square iteration is a perfect example of why marketing frequently needs to be politely asked to see themselves out of the chat. “Let’s take what made this design cool and just use way less of it… you know, for sales!”
I have to say that this vehicle is way too small to comfortably seat that many people. A couple of analogues come to mind. One is the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. He’s deeply revered but it’s easy to get the impression that he was kind of a cruel guy. Take a walk around the top floor of the Marin County Civic Center and you’ll get what I’m talking about. It’s a majestic, expansive place… with walkways so claustrophobically narrow two people passing with briefcases can’t help but bump into each other. His bedrooms make prison cells look spacious. His angularly precious built-in furniture was a masterclass in passive-aggressive control freakiness.
The other example of cramped uncomfortablility that third row conjures is the back of my Land Cruiser. The first thing 80 percent of 80-series owners do is yoink out those barely-useful seats that sit a half-inch off the floor. Absolutely no one but a very small child could be comfy back there. And yet Toyota provided that set of passengers with their own ashtrays. Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em, kids!
I had two 1st gen xB’s and was amazed at the storage. I can’t imagine the Tardis that Cube must be.
fun fact, this was sold in Malaysia as the Mitsuoka MBox almost unchanged!
you should write an article on the Malaysian Mitsuokas of the 2010s, they are so gleefully weird (for a Mitsuoka that is, because they were unchanged from the donor cars aside from badging and maybe a grill or two)
here is some info: https://www.wapcar.my/news/rebadged-harriers-and-land-cruisers-mitsuoka-malaysias-normal-lineup-beyond-the-weird-japanese-cars-750655
Cube^3 is cleaver and fun!
Imagine this or the Mazda 5 with Toyota’s hybrid system
Which reminds me in other markets the 3rd gen Prius V was sold with a 3rd row too!
https://priuschat.com/threads/prius-v-3rd-row-seating.137351/
It was cleaver? Does that mean it was cutting edge?
Yes IMO “cube cubed” as a name to represent a cube shaped car with 3 rows of seats is cleaver(ly?) named.
That and like Jason I do appreciate space efficient and outright efficient vehicles, like I noted above + the vw xl1, Honda insight, Hyundai ioniq*, loved the Mercedes eqxx and very just created a fun prototype called the Efficient? that looks like it can seat 4 and has a cd of 0.15
*fair chance my next DD will be an Ioniq 6 SE w/18″ wheels that has epa range 360 miles, as they can be found used about $20k and have (for usdm) still really good recharging times (10-80% is like 20 min.), and 100k / 10 year powertrain warrenty
Things I genuinely did not know about until today.
I always liked the Cube, even if I was very much scared of the JATCO inside.
I know we’re going to get at least half a dozen comments about the third row being unusable, so I’m going to head them off and remind people that it’s possible to have a third row for occasional use only. You don’t have to cram two people back there for a road trip between Portland to other Portland. Two bonus kids across town is fine.
I’d rather have the extra cargo room sans the seats. Kids should be left at home with a sitter until they are old enough to drive themselves anyway.
I mean, the seats are probably removable anyway, if that’s your cup of tea.
The trouble is they never seem to leave a properly flat load floor when configured for a third row. Or in the case of Chrysler stow and go, you get a flat load floor that’s higher than it could be, AND horrifically uncomfortable seats both.
Yeah the second row of the Chrysler isn’t exactly comfortable (I own one). They’re sort of like high quality lawn chairs. But they’re for my kids and frankly, they have it pretty, pretty good.
LOL – proper parenting style, I approve. I just watched a YouTube short where a dude passed on a particular Porsche Panamera because it didn’t have massaging rear seats for his daughters. WTF?
But I want captain’s chairs in the middle of any van I own. Wasn’t THAT big of a deal to take them out of the Old Man’s Windturd and leave them in the garage when I needed a cave on wheels, and they were stunningly comfy. That thing really was awesome in 1995 (absolutely hard-loaded LX with every possibly option), but it was also an absolutely epic turd reliability-wise.
All I wanted as a kid was for my parents to get a minivan. Just a second gen Caravan would have been an amazing win for 8 year old me, who was pretty sick of being shoulder to shoulder and sweating with my siblings in the back of whatever small to midsize sedan we had at the time. I would have been willing to sit on a Catholic church pew in the back of the van if it meant I could even have even budget airline amounts of personal space.
So yeah I think my kids are living it up.
For modern vans, the rear rows of the Odyssey are probably the most comfortable. It’s honestly probably still the best overall van available that sort of does everything except efficiency well. But the 10k in savings and the Stow N Go was too hard to pass up.
They didn’t exist when I was a kid, LOL. But my best friend’s parents were early adopters when we were in high school, and he took thier first one to college with him. Many shenanigans resulted, including possibly the theft of a Coke machine that somehow turned up in the basement of his apartment. Somehow, like magic, nobody saw anything, you can’t prove nothing…
My grandparents were devotees of the plywood pleasure palace American wagon (and then Suburbans after that), so I spent lots of time in the tailgunner seats. But my mother and stepfather had a ropey 911 and a ’77 Grand Prix respectively for much of my younger years, both of which had back seats for legless infants. I hit 6ft in the 8th grade… So if I was going anywhere with both of them, it was human pretzel time. My kid brother is 9yrs younger, so in those days he didn’t take up much space. Not like monster kid seats were a thing back then either. He was, and continues to be a royal pain in the ass though.
I had the current KIA van as a rental and really liked it. At this point, IMHO, all of them are just “vans” there is nothing mini about them anymore. That thing is mammoth, though I can’t say I tried out the third row myself. Did stick a client back there going out to lunch and didn’t get any complaints. Had to schlepp a bunch of equipment around for that one, hence the van. Best van I have ever rented for the second row was a Toyota Sienna that had thier captain’s chairs that are like business class airliner seats. Third row didn’t look great in that though. And the Toyota tax on those is insane.
Yeah the Sienna is expensive, and basically unavailable around here. And yes, the modern minivan is pretty damn enormous. We put adults back there often enough, and nobody complains.
They are the proper tool for the job if you need to cart around more than 5 people. Until you get to battlecruiser Tahoe/Suburban size, 3-row CUVs pretty universally suck at it.
Two things – the newer Multipla was a two row car, but with three seats front and back. You have to be friendly with the person in the middle when shifting.
Secondly, shouldn’t a stretched Cube be a Cuboid?
Thank you, I made that clear in the text now!
I don’t want to be pedantic (well, clearly I do) but the Fiat Multipla seats 6 in 2 rows of 3, but they are not bench seats – they’re staggered with the middle seat slightly behind the driver/offside passenger seats (theoretically to improve shoulder room)
Also, I would argue that the Cube³ is actually an 8- or maybe even 9-seater. Sure, there are only 2 seatbelts up front and in the wayback, but why else is there an upholstered bench between the driver and passenger?
As a front bench seat nerd, I totally see room in the front for 3 people, even if there is no seat belt.
I just googled “cube shag carpet” and . . . What the hell!?!
That’s on the same plane as the flower cave in VM new beetles, but somehow even less useful.
Anyone who googles “shag carpet” is braver than I am.
It seemed far safer than “cube pubes” or “cubic hair”.
I had a 2010 Cube. If you werent in a hurry and didn’t have to go on the highway, that was an amazing car. it held so much stuff including a 6’4″ me in really good comfort. Drove ours from Denver to San Diego and other pretty good good road trips.
In fact i just built a model replica of mine – https://imgur.com/gallery/2010-nissan-cube-1-24-fujimi-model-8rgfvTD
Awesome!