The Ultimate City Slinger

The present world is mad about small, efficient, zippy city cars. We'd all like to tell ourselves we love city cars because they are environmentally friendly without being overly pretentious and that they are ideal for use on city streets where you'd actually think of sharing roadspace with other people. However, truth is, city cars hurt our wallet less in every way than bigger, more luxurious cars. While under the influence of cheapness, things can go a bit awry.
So, without much further ado, we are happy to introduce the Shift designed city car for Dhaka streets, compiled with features that give a car the necessary balance of cheap cost, reliability, simplicity, quality, and size.
It's all on paper, and it's all hypothetical, but see if it makes sense to you.
The engine: Not more than 1.3 liters, with the right balance of grunt and fuel economy. Hybrid powertrains are expensive to manufacture and the gains are not significant enough over conventional petrol power, so scratch the hybrid. A turbo-diesel would've made sense as well, but our Natural Gas-crazy nation wouldn't know what to do with one. So, small displacement petrol engine, with simplicity the key factor.
Transmission: People hate driving manuals here, and granted that shifting frequently while sitting in traffic can get annoying, we'll go with a 4 speed automatic. CVTs offer significant fuel savings, especially where frequent heavy traffic is involved, but maintenance cost and relative complications over a conventional automatic means CVT is dropped from the menu.
Seating: Seats 5, with foldable rear seats. Driver and front passenger get preference, with proper padded seats. Rudimentary rear seats to keep costs down.   
Interior and packaging: Air-conditioning is a must for our climate, but to keep things efficient and light weight, we fit the smallest possible combination of AC compressor and ancillary equipment. Efficient packaging is a trump card of city cars, so chuck out the spare tire in favour of run-flat tires for better bootspace and lighter weight, do away with a big stereo system and absolutely anything that is not needed. Including extra floor-mats, door-card trims, and so on.
That special feature: Suicide doors. Before you laugh us off as jokers, think about it. It'll reduce the dimensions of the car and will provide easy access for the rear occupants. Plus, it's cool.
Okay so it isn't complete yet. Watch this space as we build on the ideas for the perfect city car in Dhaka. Send us your ideas and suggestions at [email protected], and we'll see if we can incorporate them. Plus, if any generous soul wants to invest in our overly ambitious and quite rubbish plans, we accept cash only. Returns on investment guaranteed.
For a review of an actual city car, tune in to Shift next week for a review of the brand new Tata Nano.