ONE of the characteristics of great design is that we cannot remember what visual culture was like before it. Good design instantly enters our consciousness and reshapes and reforms what we see. It becomes a form of benchmark against which to judge other things. With that standard fixed in our brain, it is hard to understand that there was a time when not merely did that standard not exist, but it was, quite literally, unimaginable.
A generation ago, the Mini represented such a breakthrough in car design. It was, quite simply, a visual and engineering pioneer which rewrote all the rules about small-car design. Once those rules were written, it was impossible to understand the limitations on car design which had prevented the Mini being designed earlier.
Mark of genius
Nearly 40 years later, we are just now getting used to the Ford Ka, the appearance of which a few weeks ago was so stunning, so brilliant, so innovative - and yet is now so obvious. That is simply a mark of its innovative genius - the mind absorbs what it sees, transforming it into a new norm, and we forget, as completely as we forget what it is to be illiterate, what it was like not to have that norm informing our opinions.
One of the curious features of great automotive breakthroughs is that visual transformation is often merely an expression of engineering excellence, as if the manufacturer knows it would be commercial idiocy to waste good design on mediocre technology. The great Citroen designs from the 1950s onwards were accompanied by a revolutionary suspension system which gave Citroen cars a legendarily smooth ride.
The Mini was the first mass-produced small car to operate with a transverse-mounted engine driving the front wheels. It was not merely a visual sensation, it was a superb car as well, even winning the Monte Carlo rally on, I think, two occasions.
Merely because of my enthusiasm for the appearance of the Ka - for I had never driven it - Ford of Ireland lent me one. The first thing to say about it is that it is small. The boot is well-named, there being little more room in it than for a foot; and a farmer hoping to take home a bullock from a mart in his Ka will probably end up walking, while the beast zooms off, a big bovine grin on its departing face.
But provided you are not intending to outfit a Himalayan expedition or equip a column of troops about to relieve Kabul, the Ka is perfectly adequate for shopping expeditions, so long as it is not your intention to buy a double bed or a Victorian tall-boy. In automotive terms, it is the equivalent of the wicker-work basket which ladies' bicycles once came equipped with, only this basket is metal, is in the back and is roofed.
Box car blues
It is that tiny boot, aided by the amazing shortness of the Ka, which leads to the biggest surprise of all - and that is the size inside. Small cars generally make you feel like a corpse huddled in a passage grave. Your knees are level with your chin. Your spine has kinked into a clovehitch. Your elbows are either tucked into your ribcage or are sticking out of each window like a fledgling's wings.
The pedals are so close together that every time you try to depress the clutch, you go into an emergency halt, and whenever you want to change gear, you find yourself doubling your speed and shedding gearcogs like gravel from a quarry-truck.
Not with the Ka. Perhaps it is the sitting position, perhaps it is the Tardis syndrome; whatever it is, you have a tremendous sense of wide open spaces. It is rather like sitting in the middle of a motorised prairie. There is room to the left of you, room to the right of you, and most of all space for the legs; one could certainly perform the floor exercises for the Olympic gymnastics without fear of injury.
This is true for both front and back. When the Ka is full of adults, it is still comfortable, though I fear their ability to play a reasonable game of cricket on the back seat would be rather limited. That sporting restriction is more than compensated for by the way the Ka drives, which is, quite simply, superb.
Magical properties
It is perfection in the city: able to fit into spaces several feet shorter than its own length. It not so much turns as swivels. Parking it can be as precise as inserting a cartridge in a shotgun. And in traffic it is as patient as an angler until a gap appears, and then it darts off like a seal after herring.
The Ka comes with just the one 1.3-litre engine, which is both powerful and relatively silent. You reach 70 mph with the ease of an anvil falling from the back of a Hercules at 10,000 feet; there is none of that stressed and fretful shrieking of an imminent metallurgical breakdown which you so often get in small cars taken out of the city environment.
It purrs up to motorway cruising speed and stays there with ease, an insouciant smile playing across its radiator. No doubt a Mercedes 600 is somewhat quieter, but then you need to buy an entire suburb to park it, and you have to empty Kuwait every time you want to fill the tank.
Not so with the Ka, which is positively parsimonous with fuel, which it consumes with the frugality of somebody using a petrol-lighter to find a gas leak. And over long journeys it remains remarkably relaxing. In fact, you could drive the breadth of Ireland in a Ka, then do a quick circuit of the Ring of Kerry at 70 mph and be no more exhausted than if you had been sitting on a deckchair on an ocean liner.
The Ka still turns heads, but the day will come when it will be so commonplace that people will have forgotten what a sensation it was when it first appeared. In the meantime, it is lovely to sense people nudging one another and saying "Look, there's that new . . ."
Or was, until I had to return my little Ka. You can drive it to the Ford garage, but that doesn't mean you can let it go. In fact, I was so attached to the damned thing that doctors were needed to surgically remove it; I now have a stump where once I had a Ka, and sometimes, I feel a peculiar itching there. That is the way with us amputees, Kaless and keening for our lost limbs.