If style’s your thing, Y look for anything else? Chrysler’s Ypsilon has the all-elusive X Factor which sets it apart from the crowd, only in this case, it’s the Y Factor.
Ypsilon takes a bit of pronouncing and I still type the word wrong all the time. Starting any word with Y can be dodgy. Remember Ypres in France, which the British soldiers used to pronounce Wipers? But it’s certainly a name that sticks. Ypsilon is also a car that stays in the memory once you’ve seen it. With so many lookalike cars around, how many rivals can say the same?
With its long, droop snout festooned with swags of metal, half moon bonnet and darting headlamps, Ypsilon makes an immediate dynamic impact. Especially if the bonnet is a contrasting colour, as with some models in the range.
Ypsilon also plays a neat trick by hiding the rear door handle right up near the roof as a slotted hand-pull – effectively making the car look like a more sporting three-door. Chrysler aren’t the first to pull this one off (Alfa Romeo do it, too) but it is very effective.
And the interior is just as stylish. My test car featured the ever popular ‘piano black’ gloss stack centre dashboard which always looks very smart and piled on the glam with squidgy fascia and doors that look like slabs of licorice and feel very tactile.
Here we find some clever attention to detail and off-the-wall styling, though not all of it works, for me. Yes, having the five-speed manual gearbox sited up high next to the steering wheel is a great idea – man (or woman) and machine in perfect harmony.
But what were Chrysler thinking of perching all the main dials on top of the dash with an aircraft hangar-type roof over them?
The all important speedo ends up sitting over the passenger side of the car, which just seems bizarre, although all the dials are smartly styled and have plenty of clarity. Thirty and 70mph are also individually marked, which gets my thumbs up .
Ypsilon works more magic with space-making inside – there’s a stack of spacious headroom thanks to that domed roof and how they build in so much rear legroom is almost beyond comprehension.
Maybe the boot space suffers, is the immediate suspicion but no, it boasts plenty of width and depth and rear seats convert easily to provide healthy amount of maximum luggage space when needed.
Above all, Ypsilon is exceedingly entertaining to drive. The TwinAir 875cc engine in the test model is great fun, constantly contradicting its size while returning excellent fuel figures.
It accelerates to 62mph in a decent 11.5 seconds with a claimed 109mph top speed, yet can still return getting on for 70mpg while only yielding CO2 figures of 99 g/km.
Tuba like under hard acceleration in the first couple of gears, the little two-cylinder is amazingly gutsy and pulls like a bustling terrier on a leash. Thriving on high revs, it just demands to be pushed hard through the gears. But the upcharge indicator light can be misleading – this car needs spirited driving, not toddling along in a high gear, where it can sometimes struggle.
Ypsilon is also a surprisingly accomplished drive – it hangs on tenaciously through corners, steering is rock solid and involving and powering out of roundabouts can be a highly satisfying experience, provided it’s safe to do so.
Initial fears overcome that Ypsilon might be ‘style over substance’, I enjoyed every trip in the car which seems to have captured the public imagination, if the number of models on the road are anything to go by.