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Square is sick, as your typical Nissan Cube buyer might say. What a world.

Sick now means something is out-of-this-world great – at least if you're 25 and under. And brick-like car designs are smash-hit wonderful.

Old fogies call the new “square-is-hip” trend the invasion of “the new uglies.” What do they know? Not much.

As pop sensation Amy Macdonald sings to her parents and her parents' parents in Youth of Today , “you don't know a single thing about the youth of today.”

Don't know Amy Macdonald? Don't know about the 22-year-old Scot who used to sing at the Starbucks in Borders Books in Glasgow? Don't know that her massive debut album, This is the Life, has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the less than two years since it was released?

Then I'm betting you're not a teenager or a twenty-something, and you might not have one at home, either.

I'm also betting you don't get where the 2009 Nissan Cube comes from – the ideas, emotions and sensibilities behind it. The equally boxy Kia Soul might be a mystery, too. Same for the coming Scion xB (to Canada next year, but already sold in the United States). Well, you'll get it soon enough. And if you're in the group that says the Cube, Soul, xB and others are “ungraceful” designs, then you probably never understood the appeal of the Volkswagen Beetle, either.

Sure, the 1950s were half a century ago, but the Cube and its ilk have something in common with the original Beetle: a willingness to fly right into the face of know-it-all conventional wisdom.

Of course, the latest car design trend didn't come out of nowhere. The Cube has been sold in Japan for more than a decade, which means the 2009 model just now wandering into Canadian showrooms is a third-generation version.

“It's fun,” says Nissan Canada strategy director Ian Forsyth, who – despite his middle age, his grown-up kids (one of whom is a budding artist, by the way) and his ultra-conservative look and demeanour – seems to get this boxy design thing.

But then, he is pushing the Cube idea, isn't he? Nissan wants to sell a few of them.

“ Cube marketing is aimed at where so-called millennials live and play, in particular – though a fair chunk of Generation Y and even Echo Boomers consume and take part”

“There are no compromises in expression here,” adds Forsyth, standing in front of a pale-coloured Cube ($16,998-$20,698). “But it's also easy to get in and out of and there is lots of cargo space.”

From the Cube's massive glass area, the bullfrog face of the front end, to its “water drop” headliner, the “sofa” seats, front door bungees, the shag carpet insert (an option) on the dashboard and especially the obligatory iPod hookup, the Cube certainly is a car aimed squarely at Macdonald and the rest of the youth of today.

We've actually seen the battle of boxes coming for some time. The xB has been sold down south for years and is a cult favourite, especially in the car-crazy and all-too-hip Los Angeles basin.

Then there is the Honda Element. It's been around most of this decade, too. Honda hoped to pull in the young crowd Nissan is now aiming at with the Cube.

Alas, the Element – priced in the mid- to high-$20,000s and based on the mechanicals of the Honda CR-V SUV – has proved to be more popular with forty-somethings in need of a sensible family station wagon. The Element is simply too expensive for twenty-somethings still living at home.

The Cube and Soul ($15,495-$20,995) take boxiness to a new level and lower price point. The shape accommodates plenty of people and stuff, while also making a statement about the owner: I'm individualistic. I go my own way. I'm sensible, not a show-off in a muscle car or sports car or sport-utility sense, and as Amy Macdonald sings, “… don't care what you have to say at all.”

Interestingly, Forsyth bristles at the idea of lumping the Soul into the same crate as the Cube.

“Soul is more a small SUV,” he says, adding that the xB, in theory, would be a competitor if Toyota Canada sold it here. But that won't be the case until next year. So there: Take that, Kia and Toyota.

John Sahs, the youngster who did the Cube's exterior design, is less worried about competitors than he is about nailing what he calls “Cube-ness.”

“It's a ‘my-room' concept,” he says. Apparently, the Cube is a car for youngsters who want to take all their junk with them wherever they go and never tidy up, either. (As the parent of a teenager, I know.)

The box – the Cube – is, therefore, a particularly accommodating design for a small car. Nissan's Cube is almost square, almost as tall as it is wide. But it's still shorter than a Nissan Versa subcompact hatchback.

Sahs, the designer, pushed the wheels to the corners and focused on big doors, lots of glass and a low centre of gravity. There is, as in the Soul, plenty of hip-, knee-, leg- and headroom.

The cargo area is massive, too, and is accessed by a hinged door at the rear – like the refrigerator door my kid uses so frequently at home. Cube hinges are on the left, by the way, which means the door opens in a curb-friendly way.

All smart ideas and totally practical. The question is, will the Cube, the Soul, the coming xB and existing boxes like the Element and even the Jeep Patriot (with its faux sport-ute pretensions) replace basic small cars like Toyota's Corolla, Nissan's Sentra and Versa? Other rivals, or potential rivals, include the Toyota Matrix and Honda Fit.

Nissan's Cube and Kia's Soul are two new entries designed to test the accepted wisdom of what a cheap commuter car should be. They aren't aerodynamic, obviously, but small engines and efficient transmissions mean fuel economy is still good. For instance, the Cube's highway fuel economy is rated at 6.5 litres per 100 km.

Nissan, Kia and others might be wrong with their latest gambit. This incipient boxy trend in passenger cars may simply fizzle (and Amy Macdonald may yet turn out to be a one-album wonder).

Sleek designs, after all, have not disappeared from what's new and different. Ford's latest small car, the Fiesta, is coming to Canada next year and it's a slick little grocery-getter that has already taken Europe by storm.

Honda's new Insight hybrid is as much about aerodynamic shapes as it is about powertrain technology. Same for the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid about to go on sale.

Square may turn out to be a sick design trend in the more traditional sense. Perhaps. But I doubt it. These boxy shapes are not only useful, the manufacturers of the latest ones have gotten the pricing right.

And after a couple of decades of ostentation in car design – of big and overwrought is better and beautiful – there is a kind of minimalist reverse snob appeal to the Cube, Soul and their ilk.

We've likely only heard the first shots in the battle of the boxes – the affordable boxes, that is.

Marketing strategy

Entry-level and basic small cars like the Nissan Cube and Kia Soul make up 35 per cent of all the light vehicles – cars and trucks – sold in Canada.

That was 573,000 sold in Canada last year, if you need a real number.

Moreover, Nissan strategy and planning boss Ian Forsyth says more than 60 per cent of the cars sold in Canada were priced at less than $20,000.

“There are lots of people buying in that area, so there is lots of opportunity,” he says. Opportunity for the Nissan Cube, Forsyth adds.

Nissan hopes to sell boatloads of Cubes (the vehicle is built in Japan) by reaching out to young people first. By doing so, the idea is to create a groundswell of interest and action with their parents.

So Cube marketing is aimed at where so-called millennials live and play, in particular – though a fair chunk of Generation Y and even Echo Boomers consume and take part in social media like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Nissan Canada is trying to tap into the online community with a marketing campaign called “hybercube.” It has goaded people into creating their own Cube Web pages – “canvases,” if you will.

The best 50 – the most “Cube-worthy” among the 8,000 who first entered the online contest – will win a brand new Cube. Visit www.hypercube.ca to view the canvases of the top 500, as voted on by visitors to the site. All are good and some are exceptional.