kei cars

Subaru is walking away from minicars. According to Just-Auto.com, parent company Fuji Heavy Industries is looking to concentrate its efforts small and mid-sized vehicles moving forward. While Japan still enjoys a thriving kei car market, the vehicles aren't as profitable as their larger ...

Toyota is looking to get bigger... by going smaller. The Japanese automaker is looking to enter the kei car market, a popular segment in its homeland. Kei cars are small vehicles with restrictions on length (11.15 feet), width (4.86 feet), engine size (660 cubic centimeters) and power output (63 ...

Regular readers know we tend to be big fans of modern diesel engines. All the past demons that had plagued oil-burners over the years have been exorcised, including rough running, nasty smells, loud operation and narrow power bands. But sadly, modern clean diesel powerplants have never taken hold ...

Click the image above for a hi-res gallery of the Nissan Otti and MocoKei cars. To know them is to love them, or to tower over them in Gulliver-like wonder. Both the iridescent colored Moco and Otti feature the 0.66-liter engines common to the Kei class, meaning each also boasts 54 thundering mares ...

Last week's announcement that Toyota wants to raise its stake in Subaru's parent company Fuji Heavy Industries looked to have no down side. Subaru gets $300 million with which to build a new factory, Toyota gets greater access to FHI's high tech batteries for hybrids, and both get to build the ...

Click image for a high-res gallery of the turbocharged Mitsubishi iI'm the resident kei car obsessive here at Autoblog. That means I'm the guy who actually thinks, "That is awesome," when he reads the (Google translated) announcement of yet another Suzuki Wagon R variant. Hell, I did two posts on ...

Click image for photo galleryWhen you boil away everything else, the core elements of the new "Bloom Edition" Mitsubishi kei cars are their Sakura Pink paint; light-colored, water-resistant seat fabrics; and makeup mirrors. Yes, there are other colors available, and we're sure some of the Japanese ...

The 2007 Tokyo Motor Show ended last week, but today we're cleaning out our closet of yet-to-be published posts from this biggest of biannual Japanese auto shows.click above image to view just how much legroom this truly mini vans have Pity poor Suzuki. Japan's vast market for mini vehicles has ...