Nissan's Cube is coolness in a box

The science of aerodynamics tells us that air is a fluid with its own viscosity and inertia. When an object such as an automobile moves through it, the object is enveloped in a thin layer known as a laminar flow. Where the laminar airflow shears away from the surface it quickly degrades into a chaos of disordered air, or turbulence, which results in energy-sapping drag. The longer and smoother a surface -- the more it approximates a perfect teardrop shape -- the more aerodynamically efficient an object will be.

Designing a car involves hundreds of hours of wind-tunnel analysis as engineers, making sometimes extraordinarily fine sub-millimeter adjustments, chase down excess drag, wind noise and lift. The process is tedious but there is a certain beauty to it, as the car's exterior is gradually brought into harmony with the reifying, God-given properties of nature.

And then there's the air-hating box of ugly, the 2009 Nissan Cube.

The Cube is to aerodynamics what a collapsing bridge is to Olympic diving, what slipping on an icy sidewalk is to "Swan Lake," what poached dirt on toast is to a gourmet breakfast. It's a travesty, a mockery, a baleful parody of auto aerodynamics. Nissan Motor Co. says the design was inspired by a "bulldog in sunglasses." My question: Which end is wearing the sunglasses?

Of course, it's not supposed to be beautiful, if by "beautiful" you mean sleek, lean, porpoise-like. That's a very old school, geezerly car aesthetic that simply doesn't resonate with a lot of young people. For echo boomers and millennials born from 1980 to 1990, beautiful is counterintuitively clumsy, affectedly unsleek, modular and angular, as in Wii consoles, iPhones and the large, squarish heads of the Jonas Brothers. It's no accident that Nissan has tagged the Cube its "mobile device."

To bring you up to speed a bit: The Cube is a huge hit for Nissan in Japan, and now -- given a projected upswing in the small crossover segment in the U.S. -- the company has homologated it for the North American market. Built on Nissan's B-platform chassis (used in the Versa and Sentra), the Cube is powered by a 1.8-liter, 122-horsepower four cylinder; offers a choice of automatic or six-speed manual transmission; and is nicely equipped for $13,990, including stability control.

Why is stability control important? Because the Cube is aimed at relatively inexperienced drivers, those 18 to 25 years old. I would never let my new driver on the road without stability control. Seriously.