Honda built its name and reputation on small cars (and motorcycles) that were fun to drive and easy to live with. I owned two in my early twenties. Somewhere along the way, the fun got quietly engineered out of the brand and the segment, replaced by sensible crossovers and EVs that treat driving as a problem to be solved. The Super-ONE is Honda's attempt to bring the fun back, and as the brand's first battery electric car sold in Australia, it's a statement about where they think they're headed.

Start with what it is. A 5-door hatch that seats four, built on the bones of the Japanese N-ONE e: "kei car" but widened by 100mm and stretched by 185mm so it isn't strangled by Japan's kei rules. It's genuinely tiny: 3,582mm long, 1,573mm wide, and at 1,093kg one of the lightest EVs you can buy here. That low weight is the whole point, and we'll come back to it.

The look is a love letter to the Honda City from the 1980s, the boxy jacked-up little hatch the Japanese nicknamed 'Bulldog'. You can see it in the Super-ONE's upright nose, circular LED headlamps, and chunky over-fenders wrapped around the 15-inch shopping-trolley alloys. On a car this small it shouldn't work, but it does. The Super-ONE looks planted and purposeful where most micro-EVs look apologetic. There's function under the styling too, with an air curtain feeding air around the front wheels and an undertray smoothing airflow beneath, but the real appeal is presence. That's rare at this size, and it matters more than buyers admit. I've just seen the Super-ONE in the flesh, and the flashbacks to the City and my two Civics were quite vivid.

The range deserves a straight answer rather than a lazy complaint. 202km WLTP (253km on the older NEDC cycle) is not a lot. I won't be heading for the Highlands in this Honda anytime soon. But if your week is school runs, the ferry car park and the occasional dash to Woollies, the 200km range easily covers several days. Plug it in overnight, and you'd rarely think about it. A 50kW DC charger takes it from 15 to 80 per cent in about 30 minutes, and a three-phase 10kW AC charger does the full job in around three hours. For a light, cheap city car, those numbers are fine. Judging it on highway range is like marking down a road bike for being bad at towing a caravan.

Inside, Honda's old 'Man Maximum, Machine Minimum' thinking earns its keep. The footprint is tiny, but the cabin genuinely seats four adults, thanks to the thin floor-mounted battery and a 2,520mm wheelbase. The retro touches are lovely without being twee: cassette-player-style climate controls and a cowled three-dial 7.0-inch digital cluster styled after the City Turbo II. The sports seats get asymmetric blue trim, there's a full-width dash pinstripe, and heated seats and a heated wheel come standard. The boot is small at 162 litres, but the Magic Seats fold flat to open up as much as 967 litres across nine rear configurations. They also fold back into the boot, giving you a flat-floor carrying capacity behind the front seats. The seat anchors can also be used to secure a load. You could easily carry two 65-inch TVs standing up. Very clever.

Now, the BOOST button. This is the bit the internet will roll its eyes at, and I get it. Press it, and the e-Axle motor jumps from 47kW to 70kW, torque holds at 162Nm, and the car unlocks a simulated seven-speed transmission with paddle shifters, a synthesised engine note piped through the Bose speakers, and a driver display that flips from blue to purple with its own rev counter. I get the sense that the Honda engineers might have borrowed an IONIQ 6 N, which harnesses this synthetic theatre like no other brand. None of it is necessary. A 70kW electric motor does not need fake gears or a fake soundtrack. It will also be alarming on a wet Sydney road. But Honda's engineers, led by Hidetomo Horita, started with a feeling and worked backwards to the spec sheet instead of the other way round. The simulated box even holds a gear through a corner and downshifts before the apex. Pointless? Technically. Will it make you grin on the run to the shops? I suspect it absolutely will, and that is the entire thesis of this car.

The tech punches above the price. It has a 9.0-inch touchscreen with Google Built-in, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, DAB+ and over-the-air updates, plus an eight-speaker Bose system with a subwoofer shaped to tuck under the boot floor. Safety is the real surprise. Honda SENSING is standard on both grades, with autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise with low-speed follow, lane keep, traffic jam assist and road departure mitigation. It's also the first Honda of its size with Post-Collision Braking, and the body is reinforced beyond kei standards, passing a 32km/h side impact test against the 26km/h kei requirement, with six airbags and ISOFIX in both rear seats. That's a proper passenger-car safety story in a car the size of a shopping trolley. There's a sustainability angle too that Honda could have faked and didn't: the front grille and tail-light housings are moulded from bumpers recovered from end-of-life Hondas. 

Pricing is sharp and transparent. Mono is $36,900 drive away, the Two-Tone $37,400, both under Honda's One Price Promise with a 5-year unlimited kilometre warranty, 5 years roadside assist and servicing capped at $199 a visit. The market has noticed: nearly 7,000 expressions of interest before launch, and the first 130 cars sold out within hours.

The shortcomings are real. The range will scare off anyone who can't charge at home or regularly leaves the city. Single-zone climate and manual seat adjustment remind you where the money went and didn't. The fake gearbox and engine note will annoy a certain buyer, though those people were never the target. If you want a sensible, maximum-range urban EV, there are roomier options with a bigger number on the readout. The brakes are a combination of disc/drum, which feels a bit low-fi compared to the rest of the spec. But if you want a small electric city car with genuine personality, built by people who clearly enjoyed making it, the Super-ONE is close to unique at the price. I can't wait to drive it.