A Box from Japan; Nissan packages its Cube for U.S. delivery.(NEWS)

Byline: DINO DALLE CARBONARE

NISSAN'S QUIRKILY STYLED CUBE has just been released in Japan and will be coming stateside this year.

We drove the all-new model and came away impressed with the improvement Nissan made for its U.S. introduction. The angular exterior design has evolved with a slightly bigger body and cleaner, rounder lines. This can be easily seen around the front and rear edges, as well as the side windows, which have been softened up with a more circular shape. The wheels have been pushed farther out to increase wheelbase by four inches (the Cube is built on the Versa platform), while the overall dimensions of the car have grown in every direction. In fact, to fit the larger, 1.8-liter engine for the States, the nose has been extended slightly, giving it more grown-up proportions.

The Cube's refrigeratorlike side-hinged rear door remains but will be flipped over for the U.S. models so it swings open from the left. Nissan designers tried very hard to keep every detail as clean and as minimalistic as possible, taking inspiration from the simplicity of Apple's iPod. The tall greenhouse frees up tons of headroom inside, and the Cube has impressive seating arrangement and overall functionality.

On the Japanese model we drove, the front seat is a bench, with the center portion of the backrest folding down into an armrest between the passenger and the driver. The U.S. model will have instead a small transmission tunnel on which the gear selector will be found.

The rear bench seat offers ample room for three adults and slides fore and aft to make use of the available space. The rear backrests fold flat and also recline slightly.

Overall build quality is great, and the plastics, though hard, are an ...