Turbo-fed Materia with lots of attitude

The Materia’s bulldog-ran-into-the-wall looks rather grow on one.

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The Japanese carmaker has a long established reputation for making small, economical and well-priced city cars such as the Charade and Sirion, as well as the fairly competent Terios off-roader and the Gran Max bakkie.

But other than its rather silly little Copen two-seater it has never really ventured into the field of bling and zing.

However, such has been the popularity of the Daihatsu Materia (in spite of its love-it-or-hate it looks) that some clever sushi- and-sake white coat came up with the idea of producing a souped-up version.

A little wasabi

No problem. The bog standard Materia already had shades of hot rod so all it needed was a couple of wasabi tweaks to give it horns.

So Daihatsu shoe-horned a turbo under the bonnet, dropped the suspension, fitted lightweight racing springs all-round, slapped on a set of cool alloys, stuck an air intake on the bonnet and then, in true urban streetcar style, they tinted the windows for the finishing touches of cool.

And quicker than the flash of a Japanese tourist camera the new Materia was born. The turbo model... the one with attitude.

Impressively, power has been boosted from 76kW (on the standard Materia) to 110kW and the torque pumped up from 132Nm to a substantial 190Nm.

She's surprisingly roomy.

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Thanks to clever low boost pressure, 90% of all the torque (170Nm) is available from as low down as 2000 rpm and with hardly any turbo lag to slow things down.

Linked to a short geared five-speed manual box this is enough punch to shift the Materia Turbo from zero to 100 km/h in just 8,5 seconds and from there on to 200 km/h before the electronic nurse-maid stops the party.

This adds up to enough squirt to give the finger to quite a few
fancy-pants hot hatches.

Dissing the hissing

What's more, the Materia Turbo is great fun to drive. It sits confidently on the road with its four wheels planted right at the outer corners and in spite of its high-look stanch it clings to the tar like SARS to an income tax refund.

At the rugged end it gets a tad jumpy on uneven roads but it will take the foolish or the brave to push it beyond that point.

The gear shift is a little tacky and takes some getting used to. Our test car also produced a strange, fairly loud hissing sigh during the cog swopping process and the odd body creak but that's probably because the little wanna-be street dragster had its neck wrung by a few other motoring scribes before me.

You have a range of colour choices, but even the white looks very alright - with the rims to give a bit of contrast.

The living quarters of the Materia are particularly spacious, attractively furnished and easy to live with. My only mutter would be about the rather cramped luggage space, although the flexible rear seating does compensate to some extent.

Although the Materia is a comfortable 120 km/h four-up cruiser on the motorway it is equally adept in the city where its small size, tight turning circle and light steering make it a doddle to park and manoeuvre

Some creature comforts

The fully imported little Jap also brags with some nifty creature comforts such as air-conditioning, central locking, electric windows and mirrors, power steering and MP3 compatible audio.

The hot Materia scored a four star safety rating in European safety tests and passive and active passenger protection includes driver, side and passenger airbags and ABS bakes with electronic brake distribution and brake assist.

Hey, dude - check my rims.

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And if all of this still doesn't add up to enough show and go, enthusiasts can further accessorise their turbo tykes with a Momo steering wheel, a 1000W amp to go along with the standard 6-speaker radio/CD/MP3-player, a limited slip differential, and a choice of mag wheels - from the understated anthracite 5-spoke, to the more striking carbon black with red pinstripe 12-spoke mag wheel with which our test car was fitted.

Colour choices range from low-key white to a couple of outrageously bright tones.

With a price tag of just under R220 000 the Materia Turbo is no cheap run around. It lines up with some top competitors including the Hyundai i20, Ford Fiesta, Honda Jazz, Citroen Picasso and Nissan Livina and although it is far from being a natural first choice in this company it has enough unusual looks, attitude and perky performance to charm those who dare to be different into a test drive.