I generally like mine (Nissan Dayz Rooks HS ~2018). My two biggest complaints are lack of power for certain driving (like with 3 passengers and luggage uphill) but some have turbochargers, and secondly that the smaller footprint does make them feel much more flimsy in windy conditions. I’ve been blown around the expressway and felt like I was going to get blown over on a couple of occasions. Otherwise, I am quite happy. I still try to walk/train/cycle/motorcycle first, but sometimes that’s not possible or practical.
Can USians stop being dependent on cars for transportation?
How about huge overweight and expensive kei cars?
I have wanted a Kei truck since I first saw one. It’s me sized and I love them.
I drive a manual Miata. I’d absolutely love an Autozam AZ-1 (Autozam is a Mazda brand). I also ride motorcycles. The Miata is actually harder to use than the motorcycles in American traffic due to its height. If you want to turn and a truck/SUV pulls up on your side you’re just stuck staring right at the middle of their door panel, zero visibility. On the motorcycles my head is at least high enough to see through their windows. Obviously this wouldn’t be an issue if the other driver didn’t pull forward to the absolute limit but that next to never happens.
For reference:
Waste of a story. Kei cars would be terrible for most American commuters. Small cars would be good, but not kei. Too small, too dangerous, too bad in the snow, too likely to break down, too slow for expressways.
I love my kei, and I would never suggest it for the average American. This is common sense, too. Anyone who researched the matter a little would say the same.
Too small, too dangerous, too bad in the snow, too likely to break down, too slow for expressways.
As someone who lives in rural northern Japan and drives his kei car on the expressways and in the snow: what? I’ve also never broken down. I don’t think kei cars are perfect, especially not mine, but this makes no sense to me as most people, including those living in Aomori which is the snowiest major city on earth, drive kei cars all year round. We do have winter tires here, unlike the all-seasons I used in the US.
Right? I always viewed them as local runabout trucks. This is for trades people doing urban/suburban stuff. Not commuting on freeways - though of course people would do that with them. Kei cars are no different than say one of the small Smart or Fiat cars. Not great choices for safety at speed on freeways, but doable for local use.
Honda fit owners were born ready!!
Best car im thinking of another
Everyone I know has been begging for smaller cars for years. Idk why everyone thinks people don’t want them. No one said they didn’t want them it was just decided for us by some CEOs. That seems to be how all of the opinions of “Americans” are formed. Same way the CEO of my company says we all love to go into an empty office and do all of our work online. It’s just bullshit
Not just CEOs. Tax and emissions law in the US discourages smaller vehicles and encourages personal vehicles large enough to qualify as “light trucks”. https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/25/the-unchecked-rise-of-trucks-and-suvs-in-america/
I bring this up every time people talk about vehicle sizes and people always treat me like a conspiracy theorist.
You’re 100% right tho. It just means other people aren’t interested in the truth. I used to be ignorant too until someone made that comment and i looked into it a little. Between emissions and safety standards we really push the prices of vehicles up ourselves with all the rules we’ve put in place.
I think the thing is when they do make them, they’re a shitty American car and nobody wants that so the Detroit execs blame us and go back to making luxury tanks for the wine moms.
I think the REAL issue is that when they sell those little cars people do buy them, but they are people who would have bought a larger more expensive car if that little car wasn’t available.
We have a little Honda fit. Great car. Also a pretty popular car that you see on the road all the damned time. Honda still sells the car globally, but they stopped selling it in the US. Not because it wasn’t selling, but because it was selling to people that would have bought HRVs or Civics (which cost more) instead.
That not true, the Fit started off strong at 80,000/yr sales but by 2020 hit 30,000/yr. Everyone is driving pickups now.
Best selling cars of 2024:
Ford F-Series: 732,139 Chevrolet Silverado: 542,517 Toyota RAV4: 475,193 Tesla Model Y: 405,900 Honda CR-V: 402,791 Ram Pickup: 373,120 GMC Sierra: 340,946 Toyota Camry: 309,876 Nissan Rogue: 245,724 Honda Civic: 242,005 Toyota Corolla: 232,908 Jeep Grand Cherokee: 216,148 Chevrolet Equinox: 207,730 Hyundai Tucson: 206,126 Chevrolet Trax: 200,689 Ford Explorer: 194,094 Toyota Tacoma: 192,813 Subaru Crosstrek: 181,811 Subaru Forester: 175,521 Toyota Highlander: 169,543 Honda Accord: 162,723 Kia Sportage: 161,917 Subaru Outback: 161,814 Toyota Tundra: 159,528 Nissan Sentra: 152,659https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g60385784/bestselling-cars-2024/
But we blame car companies for not making vehicles OTHER PEOPLE should buy.
Yeah. I want to blame car company executives and do when I’m cranky but ultimately much of this is a problem with drivers. People want big, pedestrian-slaughtering, gas-guzzling planet-killers and as long as we allow don’t take a more aggressive regulatory approach to SUVs and bloated pavement princess pickups it’s going to stay bad.
rare point of view here… that people are responsible for themselves and not everything is some psyop conspiracy wherein people have no agency.
I do still think corporate decision makers bear a portion of the blame. They’d rather make big cars, too, and are doing nothing to use their advertising to help shape consumer demand to be in favor of smaller cars or promote fuel economy. Individual demand exists and people bear responsibility, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
The fit isn’t a great car for highway driving. Yeah, they are popular for city drivers would also into mini coopers and SMART cars. There are plenty of ‘little cars’ on the market, but people don’t genreally like them because they are impactical and sucky to drive compared to compact suvs and sedans, that are more or less the same price and offer a way more comfortable experience.
after you go over 65mph it feels like the wheels will fall off, and it’s low weight and box frame makes it blow around like a leaf in any substantial winds. I chose a civic because it was so much safer and more comfortable for highway driving at 70mph+. it is a much stiffer chasis, my civic can hit 110mph before it starts to feel sketchy.
Civic and HRV and CRV are way more stable and comfortable vehicles and get the same mileage, and have more storage space.
A modern Mini Cooper is nothing like a Smart car. It’s comparable in size to a Golf, or a Corolla hatch.
which model? the countryman is bigger, but the basic one is still barely a 4 seater. the 2 door is tiny.
The normal Cooper.
The 4 door Cooper is the same width as the 2 door, 1cm taller, and 16cm longer, based on a 2013-2018 model since that’s what this tool has available:
Compare a 2 door Cooper vs 2 door Golf and it’s barely different:
Or 2 door Cooper vs Smart Fortwo:
The Smart is clearly a smaller size. The Cooper and the Golf are basically the same. There’s definitely a lot more cross shopping of Coopers and Golfs than Coopers and Smarts.
The 40mpg highway mileage that the Fit gets tells me that you have different priorities than I do on the highway.
my civic gets over 40mph on the highway. usually 42+
The HRV and CRV get 12-17% worse mileage on the highway and
nobody wants that so the Detroit execs blame us and go back to making luxury tanks for the wine moms.
Exactly why Stellantis is selling this in the USA in 2026:
What is this?
Is this a Fiat?
this is basically a shitty golf cart. golf cart carries more people and cargo and has the same driving distance.
Golf cart can’t legally carry 4 people on the roads and usually has top speed limited to about half of this one.
There’s a much higher markup on large luxury vehicles so no manufacturer wants to waste their time on smaller cheaper ones.
I just walked by two people in adjacent cubicles on a meeting with only each other. Boggles.
I guarantee if vehicles were properly regulated here, and the Big 3 here had to suffer actual consequences for their piss-poor choices, smaller cars would be a more popular choice.
Regulations have partly caused the car size problem. Manufacturers have gas mileage targets/requirements, but they’re scaled based on axle length. Essentially this means they can make small efficient cars, or big expensive cars.
Properly regulated, i.e. closing up all the loopholes.
Ford gave up all car production except for the Mustang, focusing on trucks and SUV’s. Since the late 70’s, the US auto industry has shown that it is unable to make small cars with low margins like other countries.
If the Big 3 suffered consequences, they would be the Bug 2 or the Big 1 by now.
Ford actually had the top selling cars with the Focus and Festiva, but the garbage transmissions basically drove that entire demographic to Honda and Toyota.
If the Big 3 suffered consequences, they would be the Bug 2 or the Big 1 by now.
Funny typo aside… I think that’s what should have happened. Let natural consequences follow poor business choices.
Since the late 70’s, the US auto industry has shown that it is unable to make small cars with low margins like other countries.
Oh they can they just don’t want to. GM, Ford, and Dodge have occasionally released small low margin vehicles but they either get discontinued or bloated and made more expensive, typically starting about 5 years in.
It ain’t just US Domestics either. How big is a 2025 Honda Accord vs a 1986 model?
If the Big 3 suffered consequences, they would be the Bug 2 or the Big 1 by now.
I’ve been arguing that same thing for over 20 years. Heck I was just doing it again over the weekend. There isn’t enough space in the US auto market for 3 Domestic Manufacturers anymore. They should have let Chrysler / Dodge die back in the '80s, the entire auto industry would be more healthy if they had.
They kind of are the big 2 by now, I’m not sure Chrysler still counts
Why leave it to car brains to determine if they like it? The people driving F350 GMC Yukon zero visibility death machines will never. Too bad.
Regulate the size of cars and stop pedestrian/biker deaths.
Regulate the size of cars and stop pedestrian/biker deaths.
I think that’s the point of the USA, though. You’re not allowed to indulge in nature, only industry.
Most Americans aren’t like me, but I love my Smart car. I got into it late, I thought the cars were really goofy and stupid when they hit the scene. It’s now my favorite car of all that I’ve owned, including my previous Porsche Boxter S. The Smart car was $6k used, it costs a little over $20 to fill up with gas, the 6 gallon tank takes just under a minute. It’s still a manual which I love and it’s so easy to drive. There is no extended hood so you never worry about scraping things when turning. The turning radius is insane by the way; the wheels turn to almost 90 degrees. I only need 1.5 lanes to make a U-turn and the power steering and clutch is very light. It also goes plenty fast which I was concerned about, I don’t feel scared driving on the highway in it at all. It really doesn’t feel small when you’re in it until you look behind and remember that the car just ends as far as your arm can reach. Smarts are made by Mercedes so they’re good quality. It’s a shame they were discontinued in the US, but I’m not surprised at all.
This all sounds amazing… Except having no rear. I was rear ended by a drunk driver and was able to walk away (relatively) unharmed because my trunk was a massive crumple zone able to soak up all the energy.
They surprisingly have high safety ratings. There is a trunk, it even opens like a standard truck, it’s just not very big. The frame doesn’t get crushed, but the car is very light and I’m sure the force of an impact can still cause a lot of damage, or of course the car is more easily pushed into places it shouldn’t go in a crash because it’s so light.
I already love them
I owned a Ford Festiva, made by Kia, in the 90s. But at that point, I had a fully developed penis and did not need a truck. The 4 doors were for the excess women this attacted.
Loved those back in the day but they were not safe and a lot of people died in them. There’s no chance that car would pass today’s crash tests.
I had a serious fetish for Ford EXPs and Escorts in the late 80s / early 90s. Me and my buddies did lots of hop-up work and engine rebuilds. Set aside the nostalgia though and they were absolute piles of crap.
That’s not actually true. They got a below average safety rating for impacts on pedestrians.
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please, bring back cars whose engine is just capable of reaching the speed limit, a 70hp engine in a small car is more than enough for the average person. it’ll cost a fraction of a normal American car, and be much cheaper to run and maintain.
and they are so adorable. seeing a kei car or a delica in the wild makes me happy.
be much cheaper to run and maintain.
no one mentions how heavy vehicles use more tires, brakes, transmissions and wear everything faster.
however big cars cost more and increase so the cost relating to transport. making more money for rich people. that’s why we can’t have nice things
It won’t really cost much less. The difference between a 1.6l 100hp engine and a 1.6l 150hp engine is just a turbocharger and those are less than $1,000 for an auto maker. So the cost of the car could potentially drop from 28,000 to 27,000 which is peanuts. The cost of maintenance between those two vehicles would be almost non-existent.
Cars aren’t expensive because of horsepower. They are expensive because of labor cost and government regulation. The less you have of either of those the lower the production cost goes and the less expensive the vehicles get.
are you telling me, that an American car that weighs 3 tonnes, is only slightly more expensive to buy/run/maintain compared to one that has the same bed size and weights less than a ton?
an f 350 (American large car) has between 400 to 500 hp, a kei truck has 65hp, the difference isn’t just a turbocharger, it’s an engine small enough you can lift without tools. it’s a third of the materials, a third of fuel consumption, parts are smaller and much cheaper…
Are we discussing cars or trucks? You use both terms but they are very different things. The article itself is discussing CARS and the very first picture is of a Honda Life.
In your original comment you said “average American car”. Which to me as an American is clearly a reference to a CAR. And by sales the three most popular CARS in America are the Nissan Sentra, the Toyota Corolla, and the Honda Civic. If you push it to Top 4 then the Tesla Model 3 enters the chat. None of those are called “trucks” anywhere in the world.
an f 350 (American large car) has between 400 to 500 hp
That is not a car. It is a Heavy Duty truck, one of the largest behomeths commonly (and I use that term loosely) sold in America. By sales volume the Full Ton and up trucks like the F350 are maybe 20% of total truck sales, the rest are 1/2 and 3/4 ton trucks.
If you want to bag on American trucks that’s fine but that isn’t what you brought up nor are they what my comment was about.
I wouldn’t purchase a Kei truck in America. It’s too small to be used for heavy loads or over distance and in the city a small van is superior in literally every way as it’s storage is both lockable and protected from the elements. That Honda Life in the first picture is better for nearly every use case than a Kei truck.
Sounds good to me, I’d love a cheap small electric car
Powerful rich conservative men literally will be unable to deal with this, it is too threatening to the spiritual symbol of the The Big American Car which underpins the rest of their theology… so no Americans will not be allowed to learn to love tiny cheap Kei cars whether because of literal forceful separation and denial or by rich conservatives stoking culture wars about it through their shitbag rightwing influencer mouthpieces… no there is very little chance this future will be allowed until it reaches a point somewhere indefinitely far down the road where the advantages become undeniable.
Americans will not be allowed to learn
That’s the US in a nutshell
America is a learning disability masquerading as a country
It’s not so much that but instead that most of us are both indoctrinated and emotionally manipulated so that we’re mostly reduced to trauma based responses even to good things. A society of figurative caged beaten dogs. The outward appearance would be one of a learning disability though.
Happened in the 70s, and unless we can do something about it, it’ll happen again most likely
As soon as they figure out how to make them super loud and roll coal.
