i'm not a "car person"

but our little jaunt to france reaffirmed my love and admiration for the compact car. SUVs should be outlawed from every major metropolitan area, starting with new york. they're senseless, obnoxious, encourage even more careless driving and are just too damn big for this fabulous but spatially-challenged town. i abhor them.

paris has it right.



folks there can zip around in their minis and smart cars, and their motorcycles and mopeds. it's convenient and more energy efficient (including the energy expended in trying to find a damn parking space), i just don't get why those concepts have lost their vigor here.

anyway....this little compact concept car, the pivo, designed by takashi murakami, was unveiled in this year's tokyo auto show. it's a cute little thang, and i love that it's design creates no blind spots, and "super motor" creates no emissions. woo hoo. but from the description of its "special features" it sounds less like a car that you drive and more like a video game that you play. but still. pretty neat. i wouldn't be upset if i woke up to find that the pivos had taken over manhattan.

here's nissan's official press release and some neat photos (via seriouswheels.com).