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In May of 2006 I was at a rest stop off the highway somewhere in between Nagoya and Tokyo, feeding 100 yen coins into a vending machine, trying to get a little die-cast Nissan Cube. It took three or four tries and I still have a few Toyota Vitz (Yaris to you and me) models to prove it. I was so taken with the looks of the Cube that I decided I couldn't leave Japan without at least a tiny, questionably rendered facsimile of one. You can guess my unbridled joy at the news Nissan would be bringing them to the states in 2008.

Fast forward to this morning and a bleary-eyed me pulling into the parking lot at work and seeing not one, but two Japanese market, right hand drive Cubes parked side by side, mocking me. It turns out Pratt Institute is modifying the interiors somehow for the New York auto show in May (this may not be accurate, details are murky). I snapped a bunch of photos tout de suite in fear they would disappear into the bowels of the institution, never to be seen again. I am now angling for a test drive before they are altered, if that happens I will give a full report and get some better interior shots. Crossing my fingers now for the 4wd one.

So writes Mr. Jeff Winterberg. Who, by the way, took all these purty pictures. Not that it needs saying, but how can you not love an asymmetrical box?

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