Autozam AZ-1, Honda Beat, Suzuki Cappuccino — Kei Cars are Japan’s SUVs — Cammisa Revelations Ep 26

foreign has an epidemic of micro cars and ironically it's for exactly the same reason that America has an epidemic of SUVs see you don't have an SUV in your driveway because you liked it you have an SUV in your driveway because the government made a series of decisions that made it cheaper and easier for car companies to design engineer and manufacture SUVs so they made them more attractive to you terrible fuel economy not interested horrible handling wait a second it's cheaper why I'll take two and pretty much everyone has the same exact thing happened in Japan just in the opposite direction encouraging tiny little efficient cars and in the process the Japanese government created an entire class of vehicles that people would have otherwise not wanted and that includes three of the coolest little cars ever made oh okay so I may have made it sound like you have no free will that's not entirely true but in the Auto industry there's a definite order to chicken and egg and that order is often the reverse of what you think for example you may think that a speed limit is a predetermined thing that tells you the rate at which you may drive down a stretch of road no not in America at least here a speed limit is determined and then adjusted based on the prevailing speed at which people actually drive on that road meaning if you could just convince people to drive more quickly you could compel the government to actually raise the speed limit on a section of road it's the same sort of backwards causality that created the K car it's not like Japanese Society woke up one day and said hey you know what would be great a whole bunch of underpowered cars that are so small we barely fit in them the Japanese government created that want in 1949 the Japanese government created a special class of vehicles called kgdosha with two goals one to help bolster The Reeling post-war economy and two to help get cars into the population's hands the idea was to encourage motorcycle manufacturers like Honda to use spare parts to construct Ultra inexpensive three and four wheeled motorized vehicles the engines needed to be motorcycle sized under 150 cc and while the cars had to be tiny the tax advantages to buyers were huge didn't work not until almost a decade later when those engine and size limits had been significantly expanded one car company finally figured out how to make an inexpensive desirable K car with Mass Appeal that was the Subaru 360. the 360 sparked the market and Japan saw a 30-year run of trucks vans pickups and every other body style imaginable all in miniaturized form by the late 1980s though the Japanese economy was roaring and so the K cars got left behind even though they could now have 550 CC engines that just wasn't enough for the me me generation so beginning 1990 K cars were allowed once again to expand in size but also to get a big bump in displacement which meant they could now have engines big enough for air conditioning that's where the party got started the first to arrive was the 1991 Honda beat the other mid-engined 8 500 RPM 40 millimeter shift throw manual transmission two-seat Honda designed by pin and Farina like the NSX that dropped around the same time the beat was personally signed off by soichiro Honda it would be the last car he approved as he passed away less than three months after its reveal the beat was the world's first fully opened mid-engine monocoque production car it was also the first mid-engine K car and the first to get side impact door beams an airbag and four wheel disc brakes but of course the first thing you're noticing is this outrageously cool zebra fabric but that's not the most significant part of the Beats cabin that's that it's asymmetrical the driver's side is a full inch wider than the passenger side which means even big people like me can fit and It suffers from none of the typical mid-engine car crooked driving position crap no it's perfect this is your typical everyday Honda packaging miracle it had a trunk and a frunk standard air and power windows the star of the beat though is and always was the engine three cylinders displacing a total of 656 CC's each breathing through its own 36 millimeter throttle body and using a fuel injection strategy that Honda derived for its Formula One cars it uses one set of inputs at idle and another under load all in the name of just one thing response look it even says it right there multi-throttle responsive engine control and the Beats goal according to Honda's own documentation was to be unreasonably fun and so that 8 500 RPM lunatic that you can't even see totally dominates the driving experience with some of the nastiest filthiest dirtiest most outspoken engine noises this side of a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and I mean that foreign [Music] there's no VTEC here so Peak torque doesn't happen until 7000 RPM and then Peak power comes in at 8 100. all 64 metric horsepower the beat is the most powerful naturally aspirated K car ever made and the only one to ever hit the 64 horsepower limit there is no legal limit tell your friends I don't care what you read on Wikipedia there is no legal limit to the amount of horsepower that a k-car can make there is only a gentleman's agreement among the members of the Japanese automobile manufacturers Association whereby they all pledged that they wouldn't make an engine that makes more than 64 horsepower that's it oh and also 64 wasn't chosen arbitrarily this is another one of those Chicken and the Egg things see 64 was chosen because there was already an engine in production that made 64 horsepower in production by Suzuki in 1987 Suzuki had introduced the alto Works a hot hatch with a 543 CC turbocharged double overhead cam 4 valve per cylinder triple that made I guessed it 64 horsepower the addition of that turbocharger and all of them cams and valves made Jama worry that there was a horsepower War Brewing they were not wrong Jama has no legal Authority in the same way that the SAE doesn't hear but regulates how horsepower is measured and then advertised and what happened was Jama said to its members guys we just hit 64 horsepower can we all agree that's enough and they did for the record Jama members also agreed to the 280 horsepower Max for regular cars a number chosen because the most powerful car sold in Japan was the Nissan Fair Lady Z which made you guessed it 280 horsepower when the k-car regulations expanded in 1990 to allow more displacement Suzuki punched out that motor to 657 CC's still rated at 64 horsepower turned it around 90 degrees and mounted it longitudinally in the front of a front-engine rear-wheel drive Austin Healey for the 1990s called the Suzuki cappuccino this is a latte released just six months after the Honda the cappuccino was the first K car to use double Wishbone in multi-link suspension and it was the first front mid layout with that engine fully behind the front axle it was also available with a Torsen limited slip diff and anti-lock brakes this is serious sports car stuff and the cappuccino had serious sports car speed Suzuki claimed 0-60 in V8 which makes it five seconds quicker than the Honda beat the best part about a gentleman's agreement is that there is no such thing as a gentleman especially when turbos are involved the cappuccino made one and a half times as much torque as the Honda did first and then Suzuki put an all-new engine in the cappuccino late in its life and it made twice as much torque as the Honda than the same 64 horsepower the cappuccino looks and drives like a Miata that was shrunken down to half size and then left with an air hose attached for a little too long but it has the proportions of a traditional sports car with the driver barely in front of the rear axle its top is super cool using removable hard top panels made of aluminum and depending on which ones you removed it could be a closed Coupe a T-top Coupe a Targa or a full convertible as a classically designed front engine rear-wheel drive sports car with a genuinely lovely interior it's no surprise the cappuccino was as popular as it was selling almost as many units as the beat but what's ironic is that Suzuki's first development of its K sports car started with the engine in the middle not up front back there like Honda way back in 1985 Suzuki had shown the mid-engined rs1 concept two years later it followed up with a similar RS3 and no Suzuki abandoned that car in favor of the front engine cappuccino that mid-engined RS car did make it into production as the autosam az-1 it's ironic that the last of the trio to go on sale was actually the first to start development as that Suzuki rs1 and looking at the Timeline it's easy to see how the rs1 and RS3 could have actually been what got Honda thinking about making a mid-engine k car in the first place which would mean that the last of the bunch actually inspired the first of the bunch or in other words the chicken hatched and became an egg by the way who the hell is autosam in the very late 1980s Mazda decided it would split its products into five different brands much like GM had been doing with Chevy Pontiac Buick Oldsmobile and Cadillac AutoZone brand would concentrate on rebadged launches and also on Mazda's K cars most of which were rebadged Suzuki's when Mazda found out about Suzuki's plans to walk away from the mid-engine car Mazda asked them to please continue development and installed a bunch of the team members who had just finished working on that unbelievably legendary animiata first order of business was to graft Mazda styling onto Suzuki's engineering at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show Mazda showed three concepts all called az-550 Sports named after the then current 550 cc engine max type A was a friendly City Runabout type B was a super lightweight sports car type c was a Le Mans inspired endurance racer Mazda asked the public widget like best and the vote was overwhelmingly for type c and Mazda ignored them in favor of type A because that would be more commercially viable fair enough the production car lost the pop-up headlights and the aluminum frame but it kept the removable panels made out of fiberglass that made up this car's outrageous body if the engine is the centerpiece of the beat and the classic sports car recipe is the headline for the cappuccino it's the body that defines the az-1 it's a mashup of the greatest hits of the Supercar World starting of course with the 300 SL style Gullwing doors and then onto the Ferrari f40s rear spoiler the Lamborghini countachish Windows the McLaren F1 like tail lights the Testarossa inspired strikes and discount Ford RS200 headlights and air scoop add to that the driving position of a Bugatti eb-110 which means it's completely crooked but because this car is half the size I'm stuck also there's no frunk and there's no trunk and there would be storage on the shelf behind me except there's a spare tire there which is a little weird because come with me no back here is a spot for the spare tire problem was and crashes the spare tire push the steering column towards the driver so autosam sent out a carrying pouch and asked owners to relocate the spare tire to the rear parcel shelf Safety First speaking of safety apparently these little guys have a reputation back at home because there's a lot of camber change over the suspension's travel especially at the rear and that means snap oversteer that means a rollovers and that's especially troubling in a car with Gullwing doors that you can't open when you're on the roof oh well these are inexpensive cars you're going to have to sacrifice something even if that's something is you that's harsh can I say that we're an insurance company I hit my head and hurt myself get me out of the sore ow anyway the az1 was built by Suzuki for Mazda and though Mazda pushed the project along the bulk of the engineering was done by Suzuki and so the az-1 used the same two Suzuki engines that the cappuccino had turned back 90 degrees to their original transverse layout and with the strongest 64 horsepower this side of 128 horsepower that's a little monster this thing is genuinely quick but the autosan amazing one was a Marketplace failure they sold just 4 392 of them plus 531 identical Suzuki caras meaning the other two cars each outsold the autism six to one and the reason for that wasn't just the cramped interior or the sketchy handling it was because the boom economy that had created these little party animals had bust by the time the az-1 finally hit dealerships coolest guy at the party but he got there after the cops had shut it down how ironic that the Min engine Suzuki that sparked the idea of a k-sports car would ultimately become a victim of its own tardy timing and it wasn't even that late it was only a year after the cappuccino and a year and a half after the beat by that point Honda had already sold two-thirds of the Beats it would ever produce this was a very short party by some measures Japan's recession lasted 25 years and although that meant the end of those Legends all of that economic downtime continued to fuel the popularity of the K car foreign though in the form of practical little boxes that were inexpensive to buy put on the road ensure maintain and Fuel and today 40 of the cars on the road in Japan are K cars just like half the cars on our roads or SUVs both of those categories of vehicles exist because a government decided they would be advantageous and when an economic boom period collided head on with legislation that had been designed to mobilize the economically disadvantaged well the craziest little thing happened three times [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] oh hi I didn't see you standing there but since you're there let me ask you a question do you know about ask Hagerty that's a service that we offer to Hagerty drivers club members where you can call in and ask anything it's also the only way hold on there's a caller right now thank you for calling ask Hagerty this is Jason how can I help you the red line on that engine is 7200 RPM you're welcome as I was saying the Hagerty Drivers Club is the only way that you can get our award-winning drivers code hold on one second thank you for calling ask Hagerty this is Jason how can I help you uh yes a very strange tire size indeed 205 55 15. you're welcome Mom uh see you for dinner okay love you bye anyway as I was saying that's how you get the magazine hold on one second and there's a lit thank you for calling ask Hagerty this is Jason how can I help you huh no not ask anything it's the only way for you to to get the magazine and stuff so there's oh my God there's a link that's above here somewhere floating on thing you can click on and I get credit for it it's probably in the description too hold on thank you for calling ask Hagerty please hold thank you for calling us Hagerty please hold thank you for calling us Hagerty please hold hello and thank you for calling Hagerty and ask Hagerty and Hagerty Drivers Club if you know your party's extension please dial it after the tone anyway there's also other cool stuff for HDC membership including free advertising in our in our classified ads and uh yeah I'm sorry thank you for holding how can I help you yeah yeah I'm single call me on my personal line after um yeah filming right now thanks bye thank you for holding fired you're fired okay [Music]

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 716,392

Keywords: Kei Car, Kei Cars, Japan, JDM, Honda, Honda Beat, pp1, pp1-100, Suzuki, Suzuki Cappuccino, Mazda, Autozam AZ-1, keijidōsha, Japanese Government, Subaru, nissan figaro, daihatsu copen, subaru 360, WWII, automotive history, 1990, 90's, Soichiro Honda, Hagerty, Classic Car, Jason camisa, camisa, camissa, Doug demuro, throttle house, carwow, top gear, Revelations, history, story, ITBs, MTREC, Turbo, 3-cylinder, VTEC, Jason cammisa, motor trend, 660 cc, E07A, F6A, K6A, 0-60, quarter-mile, rs/1, rs/3, microcar

Id: LcB-nFt_bm0

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 15 2022