Round the Bend

Just a couple of tweaks and it's an iPhone on wheels
Daihatsu Materia
By now, you will have heard all about the new Apple iPhone. You will have been told its battery has the life expectancy of a veal calf, and that if you want to take a photograph, you'd be better off setting up an easel and breaking out the oils.
What's more, you'll have been told – by people who haven't got one – that it works only on O2, that it can't receive pictures via the text service and that it jams a lot.
There's something else as well. It is able to deliver the weather forecast from San Diego and clips from YouTube of young Asian men falling off motorcycles, because it can be connected to the internet. This, however, is not easy. Certainly, you won't be able to do it. So you're going to need a 'little man'.
It used to be that wealthy families in rural idylls would have a 'little man' in the village who could be called upon to come round at a moment's notice and remove dead pigeons from the chimney pot. Or start the car. Or free the satellite dish from the clematis.
He was the most vital cog in the community. But not any more. Because today he's been surpassed by someone far more important. The 'little man' who will come round to fix your broken laptop.
Unfortunately, my little man, who is called Hugo, recently met with some success and is now busy installing vast intranets on industrial estates. So asking him to come round to unblock a stubborn wireless network is a bit like asking Led Zeppelin to come round and be the turn at your four-year-old's birthday party.
This is a disaster because Hugo is the only man alive who knows how my house works. He knows the systems that prevent reporters from sitting in the road outside and reading my e-mails. He knows the codes that allow my daughter's laptop to speak to my phone. He knows the DNA of every socket and every inch of cable. And now he is gone.
So when my iPhone asks for an APN and a username and a password before it can hook up to something called the Edge, I have no idea what it's on about. Nor do I know if I want the VPN on or off because I don't know what a VPN is. Or data roaming. And then I have to tell it whether I am WEP, WPA or WPA2.
And, of course, my new little man can't help either because all the information is locked in the mind of my old little man.
The upshot is that I can't access the internet when I'm out and about, and do you know what? That is not the end of the world, because when I'm on location I rarely have the time or the inclination to think, 'What I'd like to do now is watch a Korean explode, and then maybe I'll watch a plump lady in Houston playing with herself.'
Nor can I access my e-mails, which is also a good thing because nothing has ever been said in an e-mail that needed to be said at all.
And anyway, even without these facilities, the iPhone sits in the pantheon of great inventions alongside the wheel, fire and Sky+. It's one of those things that come into your life and you think, 'How in the name of God did I ever manage without it?'
Sure, the camera, as has been suggested, can't take pictures if it's too dark, too bright or something in between, but everything else is brilliant. You type out texts on a proper qwerty keyboard, and even if you make a mistake it uses witchcraft to correct the error. And then there's the telephone, which comes with big, special-needs numbers that you can't miss even if you have fingers like burst sausages. And on top of this, it's an iPod.
Problems? Honestly, there aren't any. I've had mine hacked so it works on Vodafone, and I'm sorry, but the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that I'm a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when I'm on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort.
This brings me on to an interesting idea. Why doesn't Apple make a car?
The fact of the matter is that the established car makers are timid and afraid of change. They think the mini MPV is a revolution and that the Smart car can be mentioned in the same breath as penicillin. This means they never think outside the box.
Why, for instance, does a car have a steering wheel? Or pedals? Or a dashboard? No, really. As anyone under the age of fifteen will tell you, the handset for a PlayStation can be used to steer, accelerate and brake a car. And there are still spare buttons on the handset that can be used to fire machine guns.
And, of course, without a steering wheel or a dashboard, there'd be a lot more space in the cabin, and no need for expensive, weighty airbags. And that's just me, thinking off the top of my head.
I feel fairly sure that if Apple were asked to make a car, it would come up with an automotive iPod, and within weeks we'd view the current alternatives in the same way that we now view the cassette tape, the LP and the 8-track. Until then, however, we will have to make do with the Daihatsu Materia.
In essence, this is a small, five-door hatchback that you can buy for £10,995. But as you can see from the pictures, it doesn't look like a small five-door hatchback. It looks like the Johnny Cab Arnold Schwarzenegger used when he was on Mars.
You may not care for the styling very much, in the same way that you may think an iPod is no match for the gloss and the joy of an album cover. But there is one big advantage. And I do mean big. Inside, the Materia is absolutely vast.
On the outside, then, you have a car that is as easy to park as a small Volkswagen. But inside, five adults can luxuriate.
It's a nice place to be, too. The dashboard doesn't look like it was designed to a price – which, because they've put the instruments in the middle so they don't have to be changed for left-hand-drive markets, it was. However, precisely because the instruments are in the middle, it looks like it's all been styled by someone with a vision, and a polo-neck jumper.
The Materia is well equipped, too. You get a CD changer – wow – air-conditioning, rear parking sensors, electric bits and bobs and, if you fork out £800 more, an automatic gearbox.
Under the bonnet there's a 1.5-litre engine that produces – just – enough get-up-and-go to mean the Materia can be used on a motorway. It's not like today's Euro-smalls that have too much weight and too little oomph to get out of the inside lane.
To drive? Well, it's fairly terrible, if I'm honest. Any attempt to make it dance is resisted with lots of bouncing around, and because the front seats are so utterly lacking in side support you tend to fall out of them if you are even remotely spirited.
It doesn't matter, though. Criticizing the little Daihatsu for not being sporty is a bit like criticizing Postman Pat's van for not being any good at making mashed potatoes.
The only thing I will criticize is the fuel consumption. Maybe because the body has the aerodynamic properties of a warehouse, or maybe because the engine's bigger than is normal, it isn't the pound stretcher you might imagine: around 35mpg will be the norm.
This will add a few pounds to your annual motoring bill but I think it's worth it. I liked this car very much. You will, too, whether you're a school-run mum, an old lady or a surfer dude who wants a boxy replacement for your recently expired VW Microbus.
However, there is a long way to go. Daihatsu has wandered off the well-worn path with this one, and come up with what the motor industry would call radical and daring. But imagine what might be possible if the Materia were now handed over to the computer industry. We'd get a properly amazing car. And little men everywhere would be in work for the rest of time.
6 January 2008