"not much more than a box on wheels"

TOKYO — The Daihatsu Deca Deca, debuting at the 2009 Tokyo Auto Show, is a delightful family-oriented microvan. It's really not much more than a box on wheels — but one with such clever touches as slim fold-away seats and flip-out doors.

The Deca Deca is ultra-compact, measuring only 133.7 inches long overall — more than a foot shorter than a Mini Cooper. The Deca Deca resembles a cargo van from the driver side, with a single door and a massive sheet-metal panel with a tiny horizontal window at the top, and a more conventional people mover from the passenger side with a set of doors, hinged at the front and rear.

The load floor is low and flat, the seats are reconfigurable and the passenger-side doors swing out wide to provide easy access to the cabin. A turbocharged 1.3-liter three-cylinder engine drives the front wheels through a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT).