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kei car
retro
Honda Motocompo Fits In Your Tiny Trunk!
Tiny Japanese cars from the '70s and '80s are awesome, but can you really fit anything more than a small suitcase or a couple bento boxes in the back? Actually, yes. In fact, back in the '80s, Honda sold the City with a motorcycle in the rear hatch. How did it fit? It transformed!More »
junkyard find
A Little TLC Will Get This Honda 600 Back On The Road. Well, No.
You don't see any Honda 600s on the street these days, although they didn't sell too badly back in the early 70s. You see them at car shows, and that's about it. That leads me to wonder where this example I spotted at an East Bay self-service wrecking yard has been hiding all these years. It looks like the interior is packed with engine parts from several other Honda 600s (or maybe Honda motorcycles), so maybe this was a "last resort" parts car that was finally used up by a 600 freak and discarded like an empty sake bottle. Not many parts left, but a few bits and pieces might be worth salvaging.
chery van
Chery Making Out-Of-Scale Kei Vans?
We just came across a set of new spy shots of what appears to be an as-of-yet-unknown new Chery van which to us looks a whole lot like a plus-size kei-type van. Aside from noting the dude smoking a cigarette in the drivers seat and — is that toilet paper on the dash? Whatever, we've got nothing on this one. As you may already know, we kind of dig the style of kei cars but the size? Eh, not so much. Maybe this is a nice compromise. Looks fairly roomy to us and probably seats something like seven passengers. Heck, maybe there's a porta-potty on board. And there ya go, that would explain the tissue, wouldn't it?[ChinaCarTimes]
9:40 AM on Fri May 30 2008
By Ben Wojdyla
618 views,
16 comments
Latest by 4.9 Port Fuel Injection BZR: Seven passengers? More like 12. They're small people. If my family can fit 15 people in a Mitsubishi Montero, then that hilarious thing can fit just as many! more »
down on the street bonus edition
DOTS Geneva: A Tiny Something Or Other
We have no idea what this is, but after the Peel Trident, this is probably the smallest street legal vehicle we've ever seen. And despite our best deciphering and sleuthing efforts, it remains unidentified. F-gobble-de-gook Tech was the best we could get out of it. How can someone get into this thing and feel fine about it? We'd rather take our chances on a regular scoot, at least there you can jump away from a wreck. But hey, this is a convertible and has those fancy, new fangled canvas doors.More »
choose your eternity
Yesterday's all-Corvette Choose Your Eternity poll resulted in the '68 just barely edging out the '69, no doubt due to the Jimi Hendrix connection. Now it's time to try a different type of theme; we haven't yet seen a selection of cars based on a model year alone, so today we're going with two vastly different- yet vastly cool- choices from Anno Domini 1958, the year Nikita Krushchev became premier of the Soviet Union.
More »
Project Car Hell, 1958 Edition: Mercury Commuter or Vespa 400?
Yesterday's all-Corvette Choose Your Eternity poll resulted in the '68 just barely edging out the '69, no doubt due to the Jimi Hendrix connection. Now it's time to try a different type of theme; we haven't yet seen a selection of cars based on a model year alone, so today we're going with two vastly different- yet vastly cool- choices from Anno Domini 1958, the year Nikita Krushchev became premier of the Soviet Union.More »
new cars
More Japanese-Market Goodness: Subaru R2
In addition to barging into a Tokyo Toyota showroom and shooting the latest Century, the folks at Japanese Nostalgic Car Magazine proceeded to take their act down the street to the nearest Subaru dealership, where they got some nice photos of the new R2. Make the jump for more photos and Ben Hsu's description.More »
new cars
Suzuki Palette, the Kei Car for Moms
We're continually fascinated with the level of innovation and practicality the Japanese are able to stuff into 660cc, 66bhp kei cars. Suzuki's new Palette may not be the most exciting kei car to ever debut, but it scores points on practicality with dual automatic sliding doors and a completely flat load floor. More importantly, it comes in pink, which may just be the most righteous color to paint a kei car there is. Personally, I'm holding out for a pink Nissan Pao and a wardrobe full of '70s safari-style lounge suits.
classic ad watch
Chicks Dig The Mirror-Waggling '84 Suzuki Cervo!
We love us some weird Japanese-market car ads, and this one for the
german christmas
DOTS Germany: Supermini Substop Delivery Truck
Job one when we made our way into Bamberg on the first day was to replace the anemic and poorly appointed Mercedes B-Class rental (seriously, how does that thing wear a star?) with a far more capable and comfortable Audi A4 mit 2.0 TDi. While we were on this mission, we came across this spectacular beauty. Making kei-cars look like my Lincoln, this "Substop" delivery truck was like manna from bizarro heaven. We're pretty sure that it's worn as a backpack during delivery runs. The utter hoonage that could result from matching this with a Hayabusa mill and cheater slicks is unfathomable. They should be distributed in pairs, one for each pocket.
classic ad watch
Modify Your Town For The Honda 600!
Yes, Honda actually had to advertise their incredible 1971 600; apparently the lure of an air-cooled two-cylinder motorcycle engine powering a car approximately half the size of a typical American sedan just wasn't enough to make buyers stampede Honda's showrooms. The claim of 40MPG seems somewhat pessimistic, given that much larger Civics got 40 on the highway a few years later.
tokyo auto show
Down on the Street... in Tokyo: Kei Cars
We delayed this as long as possible, putting all of you into crushing fits of suspense, finally we give the people what they want - kei cars. These loveable, huggable, sub-sub-compact cars are popular for many reasons. The biggest reason for the niche is that they avoid pesky tax and insurance rates by virtue of their diminutive size. That size also serves an alternate purpose; Tokyo has roads that would make a hardened San Francisco road warrior break into a cold sweat. Roads are steep, they are windy, and they are incredibly narrow at times. Sometimes the only way to carry crates of Ramen, buckets of fish, and platters of raw horse meat (delicious) to their destinations is with the help of a mighty keitruck. To borrow a phrase from Gizmodo's Adam Frucci, "For all your most adorable cargo."
2:15 PM on Thu Oct 25 2007
By bwojdyla
2,201 views,
34 comments
kei car
JDM-Only Spiano Gets Retouched, Mazda Still Planning On Selling 300 Units A Month
I love me them little JDM micro-mini kei cars. The little things are just totally so adorable, and Mazda's just released shots of their new re-design of their tiniest model. It's called the Spiano and it's a re-badged and re-branded Suzuki Lapin. That's right — this boxy little retro-styled mini-Mazda's not made by the FoMoCo-owned automaker, but instead they've contracted with Suzuki to fill their tiniest of model line-up holes. It's a practice we're told is pretty standard in Japan, especially to fill order of low-volume niche products. And it doesn't get more low-volume than the Spiano — a micro-box with a sales target of a mere 300 units a month. But hey, you can't beat a price range that runs from just under $8,500 all the way up to a not-so-high $11,392 — and we bet it gets pretty decent gas mileage too. One more picture of the interior and the press release after the jump.More »
kei car
