DAIHATSU HAS CHOSEN an interesting name for this little runabout. To Bible readers, it's a breastplate. To The Lord of the Rings fans, 'Sirion' is the elvish word for a river or stream. To me, 'Sirion' sounds like something that should be served with chips, a green salad and pepper sauce. Bingo! All things to all men.
The elvish connection fits, for the Sirion embodies Daihatsu's principle: 'We make it compact'. The car looks small at 3.6-metre-long, 1.55-metre-tall and 1.66-metre-wide, but the runabout doesn't seem hobbit-sized. You get an interior height of 1.27 metres, width of 1.4 metres and 86cm between front and rear seats. So you don't whack your head on the roof every time you fix a child's seat, remove a wriggling pet or extract your golf clubs.
The interior is easy-clean plastic, simple and stripped down with useful, deep door pockets, cupholders and those string vest-style pockets on the chair backs that children love to fill with toys. The split rear seats slide backwards to make a large platform. After a few minutes of messing around with seats, headrests and a flimsy rear shelf, you can create enough room to move a double bed or a wakeboard.
The Sirion could save you a few scrapes in Hong Kong's tight parking spots. The turning circle is a mere 4.7 metres, almost polo pony standard, making even the worst designed car park accessible. The Sirion's rear doors open to about 80 degrees, and are perfect for getting children and less agile people in and out. The doors open in three stages, so drivers don't have to experience that heart-stopping moment when the door seems to acquire a life of its own and nothing short of a concrete post, or another car, will stop it.
The Sirion comes in nine 'vivid' colours, but I strongly suggest avoiding the Gollum Green.
Something seems to be missing on the instrument panel, however, as the tachometer is in a central pod on the dashboard. Now, this feature does look dinky in the VW Beetle/Smart car style, but it's impractical and surely this clock should be the priority on a dashboard? Watching revs and speed simultaneously would require a second set of eyeballs. The speedo is clear, but has a terrible integrated fuel digital indicator and clock that looks like an early version of Pacman.